Will Same Protest Policies Yield Different Response from Campus Leaders at University of California?
Unfolding Rules Are Response to Last Spring’s Series of Campus Protests that Led to Hundreds of Arrests
The Santa Barbara Independent republishes stories from CalMatters.org on state and local issues impacting readers in Santa Barbara County.
Michael Drake, the president of the University of California, wrote a letter last month telling the system’s 10 campuses to ban encampments and regulate other protest-related conduct.
But, as the letter references, most of those regulations were already on the books for the schools. The schools simply haven’t enforced them with regularity. That’s a fact highlighted by spring protests at UCLA and other UC campuses that saw police arrest hundreds of students who built the patchwork of unauthorized tents, barricades and temporary structures that made up the encampments.
Drake’s letter to the heads of all 10 campuses banned several things that were already largely enshrined in laws and campus policies, mainly:
- Camping, tents and encampments, as well as a ban on structures, on campus grounds
- Blocking the movement of other people on campus, including access to campus
- Blocking facilities, spaces, building entrances and other campus paths and roadways
- Using masks to intimidate others or to conceal one’s identity after violating a law or policy
- Refusing to identify themselves to campus officials when asked
Drake told campus chancellors to present existing policies — like those relating to encampments, impeding movement around campus, blocking facility and building entrances and using masks to conceal identity — on a single page on their respective university websites. Any campuses without such rules should create them, Drake wrote.
At minimum, Drake’s letter to campuses helps to fulfill a legislative mandate requiring each UC campus to articulate how it will respond to threats to safety or disruptions of campus operations. The system must also spell out the consequences for individuals who violate campus policy. The legislation requires campuses to post these before the start of the fall term. Lawmakers will release $25 million in state funds to the UC once they receive a report from the UC detailing its efforts. The report is due by Oct. 1.
But why weren’t those policies already enforced?
New policy gives campuses discretion, like before
Through several emails, a spokesperson for the UC Office the President shared the administration’s thinking, at times neglecting to offer clear answers to questions from CalMatters.
Asked why the public should trust the campuses to enforce the newly articulated rules Drake detailed last month when most campuses didn’t enforce their own rules last spring, spokesperson Stett Holbrook said that UC campuses can show discretion in how they respond to protests. But “given the size of the recent protests, the number of non-UC affiliates involved, the public safety threats, and the simultaneous nature of the protests, our campuses endured an unprecedented level of stress.” That the protests occurred across the UC system showed the UC leaders that campuses “needed to better communicate and more uniformly apply policies impacting expressive activities to provide for greater consistency, clarity and support for all our campuses.”
Holbrook’s responses, echoing Drake’s letter, acknowledged that “most campuses already have existing policies that cover the prohibited categories of conduct” but that by the start of the school year, every campus is “expected to communicate about and enforce their policies in a clear and consistent manner going forward.”
“A lot of these policies have been in place at campuses, like almost every campus has something against camping, encampment structures,” said Aditi Hariharan, president of the UC-wide undergraduate student government group. She said the policies are being crafted without student input — part of a larger problem with how frequently chancellors confer with student government.
“Chancellors meet with their student body president once a quarter, and that’s it,” Hariharan said. “And so it’s especially alarming for students to not have a voice about their public dollars.”
She’s particularly alarmed by the rules on masking, which in Drake’s letter don’t offer dispensations for individuals who wear masks or facial coverings for health or religious reasons. UC has subsequently indicated that “masking to protect one’s health” is permissible, Holbrook wrote.
Less clear is why some campuses, including UCLA, didn’t initially follow their own rules when the encampments emerged last spring. The public relations division of UCLA never replied to those questions when CalMatters asked them in April — when the encampment was still ongoing — nor when CalMatters asked again several times last month.
Holbrook had this to say, but didn’t answer additional questions about the UC Office of the President’s communications with campus leaders when the encampments first emerged: “The uniform enforcement of any policy is always a challenge in a system as large and diverse as UC. We strive to strike the right balance between enforcement and flexibility to do what is in the interest of the communities we serve — especially when it relates to expressive activity.”
Campuses let encampments grow in spring
UCLA became Exhibit A in the national discourse over student protests, violence and police reaction. The university’s pro-Palestinian encampment was attacked by counter-protesters April 30; about a day later, a phalanx of police officers from multiple agencies began clearing it.
At the time, the campus had rules that banned, in all but select cases, camping and lodging. The rules also prohibited actions that “block entrances to or otherwise interfere with the free flow of traffic into and out of campus buildings” and that “willfully interfere with the peaceful conduct of the activities of the campus or any campus facility by intimidating, harassing, or obstructing any University employee, student, or any other person having lawful business with the University.”
Protestors at the encampment obstructed whole pedestrian walkways when a CalMatters reporter visited the campus April 29 and 30. Students also blocked doorways into buildings near the encampment, used barricades to halt public access into a central courtyard where the encampment protestors pitched overnight tents and adorned the facades of campus buildings with paint, graffiti, signs and other markings that violated another campus policy. Encampment protesters would only permit individuals with certain colored wristbands to enter or have someone from within the encampment vouch for them.
Samuel Ahmed, a UCLA graduate student who was a spokesperson for the encampment, said on April 29 that the encampment emerged out of deep frustration that the UC continued to invest in weapons manufacturers and other companies with ties to the Israeli government. Since last fall, pro-Palestinian students were demanding that the UC divest, to no avail.
“I think that maybe because nothing has changed we feel even further motivated to protest right now,” Ahmed said then.