Protesters at Stanford University spray painted a memorial to American veterans killed in the line of duty with “Fuck Amerikkka.” They took over the president’s office briefly on Wednesday; although the dozen protesters were quickly arrested, others rallied in support of them. The protesters also spray painted messages such as “kill cops,” “Burn this shit down,” and “death to Israel.” After being arrested, they now face felony burglary charges.
The Stanford Daily reported that the “students were suspended and banned from campus for the rest of the quarter until June 12. Any who are seniors will not be allowed to graduate. Bail for arrested individuals was set to $20,000.”
“After entering the building at around 5:30 a.m., protesters blocked doors and windows with bike locks, chains, ladders and chairs and covered security cameras with tin foil. No administrators or staff were present inside when protesters entered. They occupied the office for under two hours before they were removed by SUDPS and escorted away in vans.”
The College Fix reports that
Videos posted on social media from the chaotic scene show vandalism and graffiti peppering the administrative building held hostage by the activists. Outside, community members and other student demonstrators surrounded the building and chanted “free, free Palestine” and “no justice, no peace.”
Police were forced to use a mallet and break into the facility through doors and windows to extract the students, videos show.
“Burn this shit down,” “kill cops” and “death 2 Isr@hell” were among the vandalism spray painted on Stanford’s walls.
Occupations of campus buildings sometimes last weeks and inflict major economic harm. Left-wing protesters forced California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, to shut down for the semester, reported the Chico Enterprise-Record:
Cal Poly Humboldt officials are closing the campus for the remainder of the semester with classwork continuing remotely, as pro-Palestinian student activists refuse to end their occupation of two academic buildings….The far Northern California campus had already been shut down since Monday, when dozens of students set up an encampment inside Siemens Hall, an academic and administrative building, at the Arcata school in an act of “solidarity with those … in Gaza,” organizers said. They demanded that the university divest from Israeli companies.
According to one report, the buildings were “completely trashed with graffiti plastered all over the walls,” and protestors had “attempted several times to break into multiple locked buildings with the intention of either locking themselves in, vandalizing, or stealing equipment. Vandalism and theft … continued across campus.”
If the Stanford protesters had not been so destructive and hateful, Stanford might never have called the police to arrest them. College officials sometimes sympathize with anti-Israel protesters. At other universities, deans have even brought doughnuts to students who occupied campus buildings, rather than having them arrested.
It is sometimes difficult for colleges to get the police to remove students who occupy portions of campus, if the college is located in a progressive city that sympathizes with the protesters. A law professor lamented a month ago that Baltimore police would “not assist in removing illegal encampment at Johns Hopkins University.” Indeed, city officials actually praised “the illegal encampment as a valid exercise of First Amendment rights, which is complete nonsense. It’s especially nonsensical because most of the protesters are trespassers with no connection to the university.”
“The City of Baltimore strongly stands with every person’s First Amendment rights. Barring any credible threat of violence or similarly high threshold to protect public safety, BPD currently has no plans to engage solely to shut down this valid protest or remove protesters,” said the City.
But there is no “First Amendment” right to camp out private property like the campus of Johns Hopkins University, contrary to what the City of Baltimore suggested. A university can tell trespassers to leave regardless of whether they are engaged in First Amendment activity. Camping out on someone else’s property is not a “valid protest,” even if the protesters have not yet made any “threat of violence.” The Supreme Court ruled that protesters do not have a right to camp out even on public property devoted to public use, like national parks, in Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence (1984).
Washington, DC, refused to remove protesters camped out at George Washington University, against its wishes, until the mayor was summoned to appear before Congress. The police then removed the encampment, right before the mayor was to have testified about why the city had refused to take action against the trespassing protesters.
