A loaded gun fell to the ground during a fight Friday morning among several students at Sylmar High — an incident that resulted in a lockdown at the school and at least one arrest, according to a source close to the investigation.
No injuries were reported.
In a communication to families and staff, Los Angeles school officials acknowledged “a disturbance on campus” and that school police “recovered a weapon from a student and that student has been taken into custody.”
KCAL news reported on the incident Friday, interviewing a parent who said students talked of a gun being found and that her 11th-grade son saw another student taken into custody from his class later in the school day.
Regarding the lead-up into the altercation, “they said that two kids were going to get into a fight, and one of the kids took out a gun on the other kid,” the parent told the television reporter.
KCAL also aired two videos identified as showing the fight that took place. In one video, it looks as though at least two students are beating another student. A portion of the second video shows a student scooping up an object from the ground that might be a gun — although the video, as aired, was blurry.
While the district did not confirm that object was a gun, a source close to the investigation said that officers recovered a loaded gun that had fallen to the ground during the altercation and was later confiscated by officers.
The source was not authorized to speak about the incident and requested anonymity.
The district acknowledged one arrest, but the source said there was more than student taken into custody.
Last week marked the start of the new school year in L.A. Unified, the nation’s second-largest school system.
The fight — and the apparent recovery of a loaded weapon — occurred one day following an after-school stabbing at Franklin High.
District officials appear to have alerted parents quickly through a messaging system, although the details were limited.
The first message informed parents that “an incident is occurring on or near our school that has required our school to go into a ‘lockdown.’”
In a lockdown “all gates and doors in the entire school are locked,” parents were told.
In an update, the school alerted families that the lockdown began at 10:15 a.m.
A third message noted the end of the lockdown, which the district later said concluded at 10:54 a.m. The third message also said the regional office “will be providing extra support staff to ensure the safety and well-being of our school community,” including mental health support.
It’s typical for such support to include on-campus school police officers. Normally, officers are restricted to patrol and not allowed on campus.
The scenario of a fistfight or assault in which a student reaches for a gun recently had deadly consequences just off campus near Washington Preparatory High, when a student was fatally shot by another student.
After months of hearings, a federal judge last month ruled that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs discriminates against homeless veterans whose disability compensation makes them ineligible for housing being constructed on its West Los Angeles campus.
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter had earlier found that the VA has a fiduciary duty to use the 388-acre campus primarily for housing and healthcare for disabled veterans, casting doubt on the legality of leases that have turned over portions of it for sports facilities, oil drilling and two parking lots.
Neither ruling, however, gave any indication of what remedies, if any, the VA might face. That question will be at issue in a non-jury trial starting Tuesday in downtown federal court, the culmination of more than a decade of legal battles — and half a century of grievances — over the veterans’ land.
In a brief filed last month, attorneys for the veterans asked Carter to issue an order requiring the VA to provide nearly 4,000 units of permanent supportive housing on the campus. That would be an addition of 2,740 units to the 1,215 already in planning or under construction under the terms of a prior lawsuit. They also are asking for the construction of 1,000 shelter beds.
They further ask the judge to enjoin the VA from contracting with developers whose funding sources impose restrictive income limits that bar veterans with disability compensation. If granted, such an order could have a national impact on VA housing construction that relies on third-party developers.
The brief is less specific about the leases to UCLA and the neighboring Brentwood School for athletic facilities and the oil and parking operations. It asks Carter to find the leases invalid but does not say whether they should be nullified or renegotiated to better serve veterans.
American flags decorate tents at an encampment of homeless veterans along San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood, Calif., on July 4, 2020.
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
Justice Department lawyers representing the VA argue in an opposing brief that Carter should not order more housing or issue an injunction because the remedy sought is unnecessary and unfeasible and would place an undue burden on the VA.
The lawsuit, filed last November by 14 veterans and since made a class action, reprised an earlier lawsuit that challenged the leases and asserted an unmet need for permanent housing. In a 2015 settlement, the VA agreed to develop a master plan for the campus. A draft master plan, completed in 2016, called for 1,200 units of housing on the campus in new and rehabilitated buildings with a commitment to complete more than 770 units by the end of 2022. Only 54 of those units were completed by the deadline, and only 233 are currently open.
The new lawsuit, filed by Public Counsel, the Inner City Law Center and law firms Brown Goldstein & Levy LLP and Robins Kaplan LLP, alleges that the VA has reneged on the settlement agreement.
The plaintiff’s lead counsel, Mark Rosenbaum of Public Counsel, said in a hearing last year that the new case was necessary because he had erred by not demanding court monitoring of the 2015 settlement.
“The phrase ‘homeless veteran’ should be an American oxymoron,” the complaint said. “But this is the cruel truth—the federal government consistently refuses to keep its word and take meaningful actions to bring the abomination of veteran homelessness to an end.”
The West Los Angeles campus, formally called the Pacific Branch of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, was established as a home for Civil War veterans on land donated in 1888 by Sen. John P. Jones and his business partner, the socialite and businesswoman Arcadia Bandini Stearns de Baker, scion of a landowning family going back to the mission era. After World War I, the campus “gradually evolved from institutional housing to medical care that allowed Veterans to reintegrate into civilian society,” according to a history on the VA website.
As many as 4,000 veterans lived on the property in the early 20th Century, but the transformation of the campus into a medical center continued after World War II, as advances in battlefield medical care resulted in greater survival rates with more serious injuries. By 1962, the West L.A. VA Medical Center was the largest in the country, with more than 6,000 patients and 4,500 staff.
But in the late 1960s, residential use declined. Then, following the 1971 Sylmar earthquake, the Wadsworth Hospital building was judged seismically unsound and demolished. To make room for a temporary hospital during its reconstruction, the roughly 1,000 remaining residents of the Old Soldiers Home were abruptly evicted. Only about half relocated to other VA facilities, and, after the new hospital opened, the old buildings were left to deteriorate.
Carter ruled in December that the 1888 deed of 300 acres dedicated to the “establishment, construction and permanent maintenance of a branch of said National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers” created a charitable trust and that Congress, in adopting the West Los Angeles Leasing Act of 2016, assumed enforceable fiduciary duties to use the land to benefit veterans.
In May, Carter certified the case as a class action representing all homeless veterans with serious mental illness or traumatic brain injuries who reside in Los Angeles County and a subclass of all class members whose income (including veterans’ disability benefits) exceeds 50% of the area’s median income.
Last month, Carter issued a partial summary judgment in favor of the veterans, finding that the VA discriminates against veterans whose disability compensation makes them ineligible for housing built by developers whose funding sources come with income limits.
“Those who gave the most cannot receive the least,” he wrote.
In the pretrial brief, Rosenbaum argued that the lack of adequate housing at the VA forces veterans with serious mental illness or traumatic brain injury toward institutionalization.
“Homeless veterans with serious mental illness and traumatic brain injury who lack permanent supportive housing experience an institutional circuit of temporary housing, emergency departments, psychiatric institutions, and jails in order to receive healthcare, including mental healthcare, services,” he wrote.
To support their case for more housing, the plaintiffs intend to present testimony from three prominent Angelenos. Developer and former Police Commissioner Steve Soboroff will testify that he has identified space on the campus for an additional 4,000 units. Jonathan Sherin, former director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, and Benjamin Henwood, director of the Center for Homelessness, Housing and Health Equity Research at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, will testify on the mental health impacts of homelessness.
The government’s opposing brief argued that the 2022 update of the master plan provides for a “supportive, integrated community” with services, amenities and recreational, cultural and open spaces.
The plaintiffs’ demand would impose an undue burden, the government argued, by requiring the VA to build approximately 40 buildings, to obtain a new environmental report clearances for historic preservation and to extend utilities into new areas of the campus.
It cited several improvements the VA has made to its services and changes to the income requirements that make 97% of homeless veterans eligible for federal housing vouchers.
It also argued that housing a majority of veterans with serious mental illness or traumatic brain injury on the campus would “segregate them from the broader community and would likely result in their stigmatization based on their disabilities.”
Carter has not yet ruled on the validity of the leases, which reserve limited time for veterans to use the athletic facilities and generate income from the oil and parking operations for VA operations.
Rosenbaum cited a 2021 report by the VA’s Office of Inspector General concluding that seven of the VA’s land-use leases, including those with the Brentwood School and the oil and parking operators, failed to comply with the West Los Angeles Leasing Act and that seven and a half years after the earlier settlement, no supportive housing had yet been completed.
Lawyers representing Bridgeland Resources LLC intervened in the case and filed a brief in which they argue that the 2017 lease under which the company uses a portion of the VA property to slant drill into a West Los Angeles oil field complies with the West Los Angeles Leasing Act because it provides a 2.5% royalty to the Disabled American Veterans Los Angeles Chapter “solely for the purpose of providing transportation to Veterans on and around the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System Campus.” If that lease were invalidated, they said, earlier leases would then take effect, allowing Bridgeland to expand its operation.
Rosenbaum said those earlier leases also would be invalid.
Neither UCLA nor Brentwood School have had lawyers present or sought to intervene. Spokespeople for UCLA and the Brentwood School declined to comment.
Times researcher Scott Wilson contributed to this article.
Dozens of officers in riot gear from multiple agencies descended Monday afternoon on a pro-Palestinian encampment at Cal State L.A. to dismantle the camp and force protesters to leave after tensions escalated last week.
About 1:20 p.m., police issued a dispersal order in English and Spanish, and the remaining protesters in the encampment, a group of about 10, left voluntarily, said university spokesperson Erik Frost Hollins.
It was the last major pro-Palestinian protest encampment at a Los Angeles college.
Officers, who included those from the LAPD, California Highway Patrol and multiple Cal State campus police departments, did not use any weapons to remove protesters and made no arrests, Hollins said. Campus security and police blocked all road entrances to campus, although exits were open, and the campus was accessible by foot.
Using forklifts and large dumpsters, crews took down the painted and graffitied wooden boards that encircled the encampment and hauled them away. Many were painted in the red, green, white and black colors of the Palestinian flag and bore phrases including “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” and “Google LASD gangs.”
Students launched the camp on May 1 to demand that Cal State L.A. and the California State University system disclose its investments, “divest from companies that financially and materially support genocide, defend the Palestinian people’s rights of resistance and return, and declare that the genocide in Gaza and occupation of Palestine is illegal under international law,” according to a statement from the Students for Justice in Palestine at Cal State L.A.
Hollins said that, since the encampment launched, Cal State L.A. President Berenecea Johnson Eanes had visited it twice and held several conversations with protesters.
While other universities, including USC and UCLA, moved in relatively quickly to shut down pro-Palestinian encampments over the spring, the one at Cal State L.A. was tolerated for many weeks. For the most part, it hasn’t been a site of heated controversy or clashes involving students, campus officials or police.
But the nature of the relationship between the university and protesters changed Wednesday, Hollins said, when several dozen protesters barricaded themselves inside the student services building, with some administrators inside, for more than nine hours. The Students for Justice in Palestine group said that administrators were free to leave, with escorts, whenever they desired. The group said it communicated that message directly and via Instagram. About 60 staffers were in the building for roughly two hours before exiting. Around a dozen, including Eanes and Hollins, voluntarily remained behind.
Hollins said there was no specific event on Monday that spurred the university to call in police but said officials had been talking about taking the encampment down since the building occupation.
On Monday afternoon, Eanes said in a campus-wide email that “those associated with the encampment engaged in unlawful acts that put staff and students” at risk during the building occupation, “including assault, vandalism, destruction of property, and looting.”
“The only acceptable option for the safety of the entire campus community was for the encampment to disband and disperse. We will not negotiate with those who would use destruction and intimidation to meet their goals,” she wrote. “It does not escape me that public employees serving a public mission at a public university in one of the region’s most under-resourced communities have been victimized by those claiming to protest injustice.”
Eanes said the campus, where classes have been virtual since the middle of last week, would continue virtually on Tuesday. The university is in its summer session, which ends Aug. 10.
On Monday, the Cal State L.A. chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine said it had remained concerned for weeks that the peaceful encampment might be compromised as negotiations stalled and frustrations mounted.
“While the protest of June 12th produced a turning point for the encampment, we propose that timely, good faith negotiations with the students over their divestment demands is the best route to a resolution,” the group said in a letter posted on Instagram. “We also recommend that you communicate more clearly with the encampment students about a timeline and process for decampment, rather than resort to an unannounced possible sweep that is likely to produce trauma, harm, and violence as it has at other universities.”
An Instagram post by Students for Justice in Palestine at Cal State L.A. showed a video of what appeared to be activists talking to police in riot gear who were gathered outside the camp’s barricades. “We have to do whatever they say,” a voice from the camp says in the background. “Can we leave?” an activist says to police as the activist looks out at law enforcement. “Yes!” several officers say in unison. “I want you to go,” an officer says. “I want less of you in there.”
The encampment was nearly dismantled by 5:30 p.m. Its removal revealed graffiti covering the wall below the “Olympic Fantasy” tile mural near the heart of campus, with slogans such as “Gaza lives” and “Stop funding genocide.”
The student services building, the site of last week’s occupation, remained closed off with police tape. Tables and chairs were turned over on its patio, and graffiti remained across its ground-level windows.
A campus security worker not authorized to speak to media said officials would clean up the building area after the camp materials were fully removed. They said they weren’t sure whether that would happen Monday.
Onlookers, including students and neighborhood residents, expressed surprise at the encampment’s removal and the police presence Monday.
“I did not agree with what the camp stood for, but I walked by it many times,” said James Wheeler, who walked over to the encampment area — cordoned off with yellow police tape — while a helicopter flew above.
“These were mostly peaceful students,” Wheeler said, “and their protest was nothing like the conflict or controversy you have seen at other colleges, aside from the one time they went to occupy the building.”
A student who said she knew members of the encampment said the police response was “way overblown” considering it was about 10 activists who voluntarily left the scene. “They sent in all these police cars, these riot police, blocked off the streets, all for nothing. It’s out of control,” said the student, who declined to share her name.
In her letter Monday, Eanes said the university would “need to confront the aftermath of sheltering inside [the student services building], the anger at the destruction of student spaces they worked so hard to create, and the grief of feeling less safe on a campus we all cherish.”
Hollins said, during the sit-in, one employee had “something thrown at their head,” while another was pushed into the door and then out of the way as protesters forced their way into the building.
Protesters vandalized the building heavily, Hollins said, and the university is still investigating to determine whether there should be arrests. Protesters covered their faces and took other steps to hide their identities, which complicates the investigation, they said.
Activists defended their actions.
“The defense of the sit-in and the Solidarity Encampment will continue despite heavy police pressure from the University Police Department, the Los Angeles Police Department, and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department until CSULA ends its financial and material support for genocide,” the group said in a statement last week.
Times staff writer Angie Orellana Hernandez contributed to this report.
Police in riot gear entered the UC Santa Cruz campus early Friday morning, arresting pro-Palestinian protesters who set up an encampment and blocked the main entrance to campus.
Videotaken after midnight showed a line of police with raised batons standing at the UC Santa Cruz encampment just a few feet from protesters who linked arms. Many protesters wore helmets and goggles and covered their faces with keffiyehs and masks.
“Leave the area immediately,” a law enforcement officer instructed protesters. But his instructions were drowned out by the crowd.
“Cops off campus!” the demonstrators chanted. “Glory to the martyrs!”
A UC Santa Cruz official said in a Friday morning statement the university brought in law enforcement to disband the encampment after repeatedly instructing students — for weeks and Friday morning — to stop their “intentional and dangerous blockade of campus entrances.”
“It is imperative that we restore full access to our campus and end other unlawful, unsafe actions as demonstrators continued to disrupt campus operations and threatened safety, even delaying access of emergency vehicles,” said Scott Hernandez-Jason, the assistant vice chancellor for communications and marketing, said. “It was impossible to do so without law enforcement intervention.”
The standoff between protesters and law enforcement began around 1 a.m. as officers from the California Highway Patrol, Daly City, Foster City and Pacifica descended on the encampment.
A livestream feed from Estudiantes Oaxaqueños de Ahora at UCSC showed protesters setting up wooden pallets between themselves and the officers.
“You don’t scare us!” they chanted. “Shame!
Police tore away the barricade and then inched closer toward the protesters.
Livestreams from the UCSC Student Union Assembly showed law enforcement descending on the encampment in the dark, shining strobe lights on students, looking inside tents and dismantling the encampment.
“Free, free, free Palestine,” the protesters chanted, one waving a Palestinian flag as officers approached a line of protesters.
Police began to make arrests around 3 a.m. But two hours later, the protesters were still at the encampment, issuing calls for supporters to come to the campus and provide backup.
“SHOW UP NOW,” Students for Justice in Palestine UC Santa Cruz said on Instagram. “5AM AND WE ARE STILL HERE. WE ARE STRONGER TOGETHER. GET HERE BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.”
“Don’t hurt students!” the protesters chanted. “Don’t hurt students!”
About 7:30 a.m., a white Santa Cruz sheriff’s department transportation bus carrying protesters left campus and the crowd jeered.
“Let them go!” they chanted.
It was not clear how manyprotesters have been arrested. Inquiries to local law enforcement agencies were not immediately returned.
The standoff took place after university leaders switched to remote learning this week after protesters blocked the main entrance to campus. Students have joined forces with hundreds of striking academic workers at UC Santa Cruz, who allege the University of California’s response to pro-Palestinian demonstrators has violated their free speech rights.
“We call on these protesters to immediately reopen full access to the campus and return to protesting in a manner consistent with both our community values and our student code of conduct,” university leaders wrote Thursday in a message to the campus community. “Denying instructional access is not free speech.”
The president of Sonoma State University has retired from his role after being placed on leave for issuing a controversial campuswide message on the Israel-Hamas war.
California State University chancellor Mildred Garcia said in a statement Thursday that President Ming Tung “Mike” Lee informed her of his decision to retire. Garcia placed Lee on leave for “insubordination” on Wednesday, one day after he released a message in support of a boycott against Israeli universities and said that the university would pursue “divestment strategies.” Garcia said Lee did not receive approval for the message.
In a letter to the community, Lee apologized for the “unintended consequences of my actions” and acknowledged that his message had not been reviewed by CSU officials.
“I want to be clear: The message was drafted and sent without the approval of, or consultation with, the Chancellor or other system leaders. The points outlined in the message were mine alone, and do not represent the views of my colleagues or the CSU,” Lee wrote.
Amy Bentley-Smith, Cal State director of strategic communications and public affairs, said “there is no written policy” when it comes to approval from the chancellor’s office over campus leadership’s communications related to the Israel-Hamas conflict.
“The chancellor and presidents have been in constant communication during protest activities on campuses with the intent that decisions at the university level are made in consultation with the chancellor’s office and align not only with shared university values and mission, but with applicable CSU system policies, and state and federal laws,” Bentley-Smith said.
While the university system’s 23 campus presidents report to the chancellor, they are considered the executive officers of their respective campuses and have some autonomy over campus decisions.
Also Friday, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) sent a letter to Garcia and University of California President Michael V. Drake, calling for accountability when a campus leader appeals to “antisemitic demands of encampments.”
“There is an urgent need for system-wide action in both the UC and CSU systems to restore order on campus, stop the adoption of [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions] policies, and, where appropriate, appoint new campus leadership,” wrote Kiley, who previously called on Lee to resign.
Other state lawmakers had raised concerns over Lee’s message. Sen. Bill Dodd’s (D-Napa) office reached out to the chancellor’s office Wednesday to ask if Garcia had approved the message, press secretary Paul Payne told The Times.
Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) also expressed opposition.
“This is horrific and wrong,” Wiener told KRON-4 this week.
The chancellor said she will continue to work with acting President Nathan Evans and the Board of Trustees during this “transitional period.” In a statement to the Sonoma State community, Evans said that Lee’s retirement will not overshadow Saturday’s commencement activities.
“We will create spaces and places to process President Lee’s retirement and other recent developments as a community in the coming days and weeks. For now, I encourage all of us to focus on our graduates and their supporters,” Evans said.
Lee worked at Sacramento State for 28 years. He came out of a brief retirement in 2022 to become Sonoma State’s president after Judy Sakaki resigned amid outcry over sexual harassment and retaliation allegations against her and her husband.
Times staff writer Jaweed Kaleem contributed to this report.
The president of Sonoma State University was placed on leave Wednesday, a day after he released a controversial campuswide message on the Israel-Hamas war that said the university would pursue “divestment strategies” and endorsed an academic boycott of Israeli universities.
California State University Chancellor Mildred García announced the decision in a statement posted to the CSU website, saying that Sonoma State President Mike Lee was taken off the job for his “insubordination” in making the statement without “appropriate approvals.”
Pro-Palestinian student encampment protesters celebrated when Lee released a letter to the roughly 6,000-student member Rohnert Park campus on Tuesday that met enough of their requests for activists to agree to dismantle their camp by Wednesday evening.
“SSU Demands Met!” said a post on the SSU Students for Justice in Palestine Instagram with the caption “brick by brick, wall by wall” that showed screenshots of Lee’s letter.
In his letter, Lee promised to pursue “divestment strategies that include seeking ethical alternatives” in consultation with pro-Palestinian activists and said he supported an academic boycott of Israel.
“SSU will not pursue or engage in any study abroad programs, faculty exchanges, or other formal collaborations that are sponsored by, or represent, the Israeli state academic and research institutions,” Lee’s Tuesday letter said.
Lee’s statement stood out. While other universities have recently said they will look into divesting from weapons companies, including UC Berkeley and UC Riverside, nearly all in the U.S. have rejected calls to target Israel specifically or to boycott formal exchange or research partnerships with Israeli universities.
In rejecting such calls, the universities have cited their support of academic freedom and anti-discrimination policies. Some have also noted that a 2016 state law signed by then Gov. Jerry Brown banned giving state grants or contracts worth more than $100,000 to state universities that targeted Israel in endorsing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
Lee’s statement immediately drew criticism from Jewish students, parents and community groups.
Speaking at a Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California conference in Sacramento on Wednesday, California Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, who serves on the CSU Board of Trustees, slammed campuses for moving forward with agreements to quell protests.
“Each campus is handling these situations in their own way with inconsistencies and frankly, sometimes coming up with agreements that they really don’t have the authority to come up with,” said Kounalakis, who spoke before Lee was put on leave.
Kounalakis, a Democrat, said campuses were “woefully unprepared” for the recent protests.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, who made a video appearance at the same Wednesday event to promote his plan to counter antisemitism, said last week that he did “not support divestment.”
Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel (D-Encino) and Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), co-chairs of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, commended García‘s decision, saying in a statement that Lee’s support of an academic boycott “was totally unacceptable and evidence that former President Lee is unfit to lead one of our great state institutions. We look forward to working with Chancellor García and the CSU Trustees to pursue a different path that will promote learning, respectful dialogue, mutual respect, inclusivity, and peace.”
In her letter announcing that Lee would step aside, García said she was “deeply concerned” about his words.
“Our role as educators is to support and uplift all members of the California State University. I want to acknowledge how deeply concerned I am about the impact the statement has had on the Sonoma State community, and how challenging and painful it will be for many of our students and community members to see and read,” García said. “The heart and mission of the CSU is to create an inclusive and welcoming place for everyone we serve, not to marginalize one community over another.”
In his own letter on his departure, Lee apologized, saying he had “marginalized other members of our student population” and that “I realize the harm that this has caused, and I take full ownership of it. I deeply regret the unintended consequences of my actions.”
“I want to be clear: The message was drafted and sent without the approval of, or consultation with, the Chancellor or other system leaders. The points outlined in the message were mine alone, and do not represent the views of my colleagues or the CSU,” Lee wrote.
It was unclear how long Lee will be out. He has been on the job for 20 months, about half the time as interim president.
In an interview with The Times, kinesiology professor Lauren Morimoto said she supported Lee.
“As of now, the Academic Senate has not made a statement about Mike Lee’s announcement. However, I’m meeting with the Board of the Asian Pacific Islander American Faculty and Staff Association and we stand in solidarity with Mike Lee and the student protesters…,” said Morimoto, the former chair of the academic senate. “I will ask to be added to tomorrow’s agenda to present a resolution of support for Mike Lee and the student protesters and the demands they were able to negotiate with the university.”
Staff writers Colleen Shalby and Mackenzie Mays contributed reporting.
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block is facing faculty calls for his resignation and motions of no confidence and censure as criticism mounts against his leadership in the wake of a violent mob attack on pro-Palestinian protesters and a sweeping police takedown of their encampment that resulted in more than 200 arrests last week.
Representatives of the 3,800-member UCLA Academic Senate — made up of tenured and tenure-track faculty — are preparing to vote on separate motions for censure and no-confidence, both stating that Block “failed to ensure the safety of our students and grievously mishandled the events of last week.”
The vote was scheduled for Friday but has been postponed to next week.
The vote has no legal power to force action, but it marks a grave moment for Block. The leader of the nation’s top public research university is completing the final months of his 17-year tenure, after steering the Westwood campus through a financial crisis and global pandemic to reach new heights by expanding enrollment, diversity, philanthropy and research funding. Last year, Block announced he planned to step down on July 31 and return to faculty research.
Other university leaders also have been criticized for their handling of campus protests, sparked last October when Hamas militants launched a deadly surprise attack on Israel and Israel retaliated with a massive bombardment of Gaza. Earlier this week, USC’s Academic Senate voted to censure the university’s president, Carol Folt, and provost, Andrew Guzman, after the widely criticized decision to cancel the valedictorian’s commencement speech due to unspecified “threats” and controversy over an aggressive police takedown of a pro-Palestinian encampment.
UCLA declined to comment on the upcoming faculty vote.
Three weeks of turmoil at UCLA started April 25, when students set up an encampment in the campus’ grassy quad to express solidarity with Palestinians, condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza and demand that UCLA divest from firms that make and deliver weapons and services to Israel. The encampment was initially free of violence, with protesters engaged in teach-in, art builds, yoga and other activities.
“Many of us have personally witnessed the vibrant, respectful and highly disciplined learning [at the encampment],” Chicano Studies department chair Charlene Villaseñor Black said. “And university administration have gotten it wrong every time.”
But UCLA Police Chief John Thomas said he advised campus leadership against allowing the encampment, as it violated rules against overnight camping. Inna Faliks, a professor of piano, said she and some other Jewish campus members felt targeted by protest chants, graffiti of expletives against Jews and blocked access to public walkways and buildings.
UCLA declared the encampment unlawful on April 30. Later that night, a violent mob attacked the encampment and students were left to fend for themselves against beatings, pepper spray and fireworks for three hours. Law enforcement moved in on May 1 and early the next morning took down the encampment and arrested more than 200 people.
Since then, a number of people have been blamed for the debacle.
More than 900 University of California faculty and staff members issued a list of demands this week that included Block’s resignation, amnesty for students, staff and faculty who participated in the encampment and peaceful protests, university disclosure of all investments and divestment from military weapon production companies.
“Following the violent and aggressive police sweep of the Palestine Solidarity Encampment on May 2, 2024, resulting in more than 200 students, faculty, and staff arrested while peacefully protesting, it has become obvious that Chancellor Block has failed our university,” the demand letter said.
Faculty who signed the letter represented various departments including those of mathematics, American Indian Studies, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Asian American Studies, history, Chicana/o and Central American Studies, African American Studies, and anthropology.
They spoke out about their demands Thursday, joined by a group of volunteer medics — representing about 100 UCLA medical students, nurses, residents and emergency medical technicians — who raised concerns regarding police brutality and the absence of medical help from the university after the attack. They said more than 150 students were attacked with pepper spray and bear mace, and at least 25 students were hospitalized for head trauma, fractures and severe lacerations.
“UCLA Chancellor Gene Block’s and UC President Michael Drake’s statements minimize the severity of both the physical and psychological impact of their actions while attempting to justify the force they authorized against their students,” a medic said in a statement.
When police took down the encampment, medics said, more than a dozen students were evaluated for rubber bullet injuries and others showed contusions and musculoskeletal injuries.
“We strongly feel that Chancellor Block endangered the lives of our students, faculty and staff,” said Michael Chwe, a political science professor who helped organize the demand letter.
Judea Pearl, a computer science professor, said UC President Michael V. Drake was ultimately responsible for the campus security failures. He said Block should not be blamed for failing to bring in a stronger police presence because he was a “victim” of UC systemwide guidelines that direct campuses to rely first on communication with protesters and bring in law enforcement as a last resort.
“He was trying to protect the campus but had to follow the directive…not to bring in police,” Pearl said.
But other critics have blamed Thomas, the police chief. Three sources not authorized to speak publicly told The Times that campus leadership, even before the mob attack, had wanted to beef up security and authorized Thomas to bring in external law enforcement to assist UCLA police and private security with as much overtime pay as needed. But he failed to do so, they said, and also did not provide a security plan to campus leadership despite multiple requests to do so.
Others said that Administrative Vice Chancellor Michael Beck, who oversaw the police department and Office of Emergency Management at the time of the mob attack, should step aside. Previous lapses are now being scrutinized, including his responsibility for not stopping the LAPD from using the UCLA-leased Jackie Robinson Stadium as a staging area for action against Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020 — which Block, Beck and others called a mistake and a violation of university values. Beck’s duties also include management of Bruin Woods, the university’s Lake Arrowhead facility, where two counselors alleged they were hazed and sexually assaulted by other counselors in 2022.
Beck did not respond to requests for comment.
Pearl said a censure and no-confidence vote would send the wrong message to Block’s successor to refrain from strong leadership and instead pander to campus political sentiments, which he said would signify a “caving in” to demands to cut business and academic ties with Israel. Chwe, however, said it would signify faculty’s strong views that the chancellor must be held responsible for student safety.
UCLA also has moved swiftly to improve security by creating a new chief safety officer position to oversee campus security operations, including the campus police department. Rick Braziel, a former Sacramento police chief who has reviewed law enforcement responses in high-profile cases across the country, is leading the new Office of Campus Safety as associate vice chancellor.
Some critics, however, said the move would further “militarize” the campus. UCLA deployed a larger law enforcement presence earlier this week, when campus police arrested 44 pro-Palestinian protesters gathered in a parking structure before a planned demonstration. Police said they carried equipment that could be “used to unlawfully enter and barricade a building.” Some students decried the arrests as harassment and intimidation. Classes were moved online for the rest of the week as a security precaution.
Differing opinions among faculty over the university’s response to student protests have created small rifts within departments, according to multiple faculty members.
Chwe said they are working to combat misinformation being spread to faculty members surrounding recent events and continue to hold conversations with their colleagues.
“It’s not only about dialogue with the university but also with our colleagues,” he said.
Caroline Luce, a UCLA historian and member of University Council-American Federation of Teachers, which represents more than 3,000 non-senate faculty and several hundred professional librarians, called the atmosphere for UCLA faculty, particularly those not tenured like lecturers, “dicey with lots of risk.”
“There are reputations and interpersonal dynamics in departments that they have to navigate,” she said.
John Branstetter, a UCLA lecturer in political science, was one of about 10 faculty arrested after police took down the encampment. He said the university’s crackdown on free speech on campus has not only made him fear for his students’ safety but for his own.
“I do feel threatened by the general atmosphere that the administration is fostering through this continuing quasi-criminalization of free speech on campus, so I don’t know if they will try to get rid of me or the protections I have will be abided by,” he said.
Eilon Presman was about 100 feet from the UCLA Palestinian solidarity encampment when he heard the screams: “Zionist! Zionist!”
The 20-year-old junior, who is Israeli, realized the activists were pointing at him.
“Human chain!” they cried.
A line of protesters linked arms and marched toward him, Presman said, blocking him from accessing the heart of UCLA’s campus. Other activists, he said, unfurled kaffiyeh scarves to block his view of the camp.
“Every step back that I took, they took a step forward,” Presman said. “I was just forced to walk away.”
Pro-Palestinian activists demonstrate in UCLA’s Bruin Plaza after arrests were made at the Westwood campus Monday.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
It’s been a week since police swarmed the UCLA campus and tore down the pro-Palestinian camp, arresting more than 200 people. But the legacy of the encampment remains an issue of much debate, particularly among Jewish students, who make up nearly 8% of the university’s 32,000 undergraduates.
In the days leading up to April 30 — when pro-Israel counterprotesters attacked the camp with fists, bats and chemical spray, and police took hours to stop the violence — frustration had swelled among many Jews: Viralvideos showed activists restricting the passage of students they targeted as Zionists.
Some Jewish students said they felt intimidated as protesters scrawled graffiti — “Death 2 Zionism” and “Baby Killers” — on campus buildings and blocked access with wooden pallets, plywood, metal barricades and human walls.
The pro-Palestinian student movement includes various strains of activism, including calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, support for Hamas and demands that universities divest from firms doing business with Israel. But on campuses across the country, no word has become more charged than “Zionist.”
A pro-Israel activist peels a pro-Palestinian sticker off a sign on May 2 as a protest encampment was dispersed.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
In its most basic definition, a Zionist is somebody who believes that the Jewish people have a right to statehood in their ancestral homeland as a place of refuge from centuries of persecution — in other words, that Israel, established as a Jewish state in the wake of the Holocaust, has a right to exist.
Using that definition, the Anti-Defamation League considers anti-Zionism a form of antisemitism. But protesters — including many Jews — draw a sharp distinction, arguing that it is Zionism that fuels Israel’s right-wing government and the assault on Gaza that they say amounts to genocide against Palestinians.
Some of the Jewish students who took part in the encampment played a role in excluding Zionists.
Members of Jewish Voice for Peace at UCLA, a small but rapidly growing group on campus, argue they had a moral responsibility to pressure university officials to divest from Israel.
UCLA facilities employees clean up and dismantle the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus May 2.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The camp and its checkpoints, they said, were not hostile to Jews. Restricting fellow students from entering was just a pragmatic move to protect protesters inside from physical, verbal or emotional abuse.
“We are committed to keeping each other safe,” said Agnes Lin, 22, a fourth-year art and art history student and member of Jewish Voice for Peace. Anyone who agreed to the UC Divest Coalition’s demands and community guidelines, she said, was welcome.
“What is not welcome is Zionism,” she added. “Or anyone who actively adheres to a very violent, genocidal political ideology that is actively endangering people in Gaza right now.”
In practice, students who supported the existence of Israel were kept out — even if they opposed Israel’s right-wing government and its bombardment of Gaza.
Senior Adam Thaw, 21, said activists blocked him and others from accessing a public walkway to Powell Library.
After telling him they were not letting anyone through, a male activist eyed his Star of David necklace: “If you’re here to espouse that this is antisemitism, then you can leave.”
Senior Adam Thaw is on UCLA’s student board of Hillel, the largest Jewish campus organization in the world.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
“Who are you to tell me where I can and cannot go?” said Thaw, who is on UCLA’s student board of Hillel, the largest Jewish campus organization in the world.
As complaints from Jewish students mounted, UCLA declared the encampment “unlawful.” In an April 30 statement, Chancellor Gene Block said most activists had been peaceful, but the tactics of some were “shocking and shameful.”
“Students on their way to class,” he said, “have been physically blocked from accessing parts of the campus.”
::
The campus was dark and hushed when Sabrina Ellis joined dozens of activists at 4 a.m. to set up the encampment on the lawn of Dickson Court.
After pitching tents and erecting barricades of wooden pallets and sheets of plywood, Ellis, a 21-year-old international student from Brazil, took shifts guarding the entrance.
Ellis didn’t call it a checkpoint. The goal was to exclude and physically block “agitators” — anyone who might be violent, record students or disagree with the cause.
“Our top priority isn’t people’s freedom of movement,” Ellis said. “It is keeping people in our encampments physically and emotionally safe.”
The longtime member of Jewish Voice for Peace — who wore a large Star of David over her T-shirt and a kaffiyeh wrapped around her shoulders — said the camp “was not profiling based on religion.”
But as activists blocked Zionist students from public campus space, they faced charges that they engaged in viewpoint discrimination.
Sabrina Ellis, a junior and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace at UCLA, was part of the pro-Palestinian encampment from the beginning.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Before allowing anyone in, Ellis said, a protester read the demands of the encampment, which included calling for UC and UCLA to divest all funds from companies “complicit in the Israeli occupation,” boycott all connections with Israeli universities, sever ties with the Los Angeles Police Department and demand a permanent cease-fire.
Then, activists ran through their safety guidelines: Ask before taking a photo or video; wear a mask to limit the spread of COVID; do not post identifying information or photos; and no engagement with counterprotesters.
If students didn’t agree, “we would just kindly tell them that they’re not allowed to come in,” Ellis said.
Some Jewish students were shaken by the experience, arriving at Hillel upset and even crying.
“They were genuinely going about their day and couldn’t get access as protesters asked them, ‘Are you a Zionist?’ or looked at their necklace,” said Daniel Gold, executive director of Hillel at UCLA.
::
For pro-Palestinian activists who are Jewish, the camp was a peaceful space to promote justice, a welcoming interfaith community with therapist-led processing circles and candlelit prayer services.
Blue tarps and blankets were put down in the middle of the lawn for Islamic prayers and a Passover Seder and a Shabbat service.
On the first evening, about 100 activists, many Jewish, sat in a circle to pray, sing, drink grape juice and eat matzo ball soup, matzo crackers and watermelon.
“It was really beautiful,” said Lin, the art major. “We were trying to hold these spaces to show that Judaism goes beyond Zionism.”
An encampment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators at UCLA’s Dickson Plaza on April 29.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Other Jewish students were more wary as they navigated the camp.
Presman, who moved to the U.S. when he was 12 and identifies as a Zionist, was alarmed when he scanned the quad on the first day. He saw signs saying “Israelis are native 2 HELL,” he said, and banners and graffiti showing inverted red triangles, a symbol used in Hamas propaganda videos to indicate a military target.
“Do people know what that means?” he wondered.
Tucking his Star of David under his T-shirt, Presman said, he entered and approached activists, introducing himself as an Israeli citizen.
“Maybe we can find common ground,” he said, asking, “one human being to the other?”
Some students put their hands up, he said, blocking him as they walked away. Others treated the conversation as a joke. One protester, he said, told him that everything Hamas did was justified.
Presman said he had one good conversation: An activist who identified as anti-Zionist admitted not being 100% educated on what Zionism was, but agreed that Israel should exist. They came to the conclusion the activist was a Zionist.
Pro-Palestinian encampment participants reinforce the camp barriers at UCLA on May 1.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
But most of Presman’s exchanges, he said, ended negatively when activists realized he was defending Zionism. He said he was called a “dirty Jew” and “white colonizer.”
Other students — even those who did not fully support the encampment — said they did not experience such slurs.
Rachel Burnett, a senior who described herself as a non-Zionist Jew, disagreed with the call for divestment and academic boycotts, especially of UCLA’s Nazarian Center, an educational center for the study of Israeli history, politics and culture.
Entering the camp after a classmate vouched for her, Burnett was disturbed by anti-Israeli signs and graffiti that named Abu Ubaida, the spokesperson for the military wing of Hamas. But she also bonded with protesters, including a woman in a hijab.
“Of course, some protesters deny Oct. 7 or condone violence as long as it can be put under the guise of decolonial resistance, which is obviously horrific,” Burnett said. “But that’s not the case of many students inside the encampment.”
Rachel Burnett, a senior who described herself as a non-Zionist Jew, disagreed with the call for divestment and academic boycotts, especially of UCLA’s Nazarian Center, an educational center for the study of Israeli history, politics and culture.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Burnett contrasted what she saw as a peaceful, friendly mood inside the camp with the pro-Israel counterprotests where people held up benign slogans, such as “Bring the Hostages Home,” but engaged in hostile behavior.
As counterprotesters converged for a Sunday rally, she said, a pro-Israel activist spat on her and told she should have been slaughtered in the kibbutzim on Oct. 7.
Just as some pro-Palestinian activists demonized all Zionists as evil and pro-genocide — ignoring the wide range of viewpoints within the Zionist community — Burnett thought some pro-Israel counterprotesters were dehumanizing student activists in the encampment and spreading a “mass hysteria narrative.”
As the encampment expanded — and organizers set up entrance points near Royce Hall and Powell Library — some Jewish students took videos that swiftly went viral.
“It’s time to go,” a protester wearing a yellow safety vest and kaffiyeh told a student in one video as he guarded an entrance near Powell Library. “You don’t have a wristband.”
The student newspaper at C.K. McClatchy High School in Sacramento published a list late last month of anonymous quotes dubbed “some of the weirdest stuff” heard on campus.
The listicle included odd but innocuous lines like: “My hamster ate its babies last night,” overheard in a hallway. And, “Please, stop licking my armpits,” heard in a history class.
Then there was this: “Hitler’s got some good ideas” — a line purportedly overheard in a government class.
The decision by student editors at the newspaper, the Prospector, to publish the remark has sparked a debate about cavalier antisemitism on campus and the rights of the press — including the student press — to publish offensive speech.
In an email to families Sunday night, Principal Andrea Egan called the quote “deeply offensive” and said she promptly met with the journalism students to discuss “the importance of exercising good judgment in their editorial decision-making.”
“Please know that I am navigating this to the best of my ability within student publications’ laws governing free speech,” Egan wrote. “Nothing is more important to me than the wellness of the students and staff who come to our schoolhouse daily.”
Brian Heap, a spokesman for the Sacramento City Unified School District, said in a statement that the remark, allegedly overheard in a classroom, was not reported to a teacher or administrator prior to publication.
It was published as part of a listicle titled “What Did You Say?”
The introduction to the list of nine quotes read: “Have you ever heard something while walking in the school hallways and thought, ‘That is the strangest and weirdest thing I have ever heard in my life’? Well, we asked you to share with us some of the weirdest stuff you’ve heard. Here are some of our favorites.”
In an email to The Times, Samantha Archuleta, the faculty advisor for the journalism program, emphasized that the Prospector’s staff is composed of “14-17 year olds learning to navigate journalism.”
“All choices — topics, writing, editing, publishing — are made by students, so there will be inevitable errors,” Archuleta wrote. But she stressed that their right to publish is protected by California law and the 1st Amendment.
“Yes, our ‘explainer’ was too simplistic and unsophisticated, given the sensitivity of the quote, and we’ve discussed this error as a staff and addressed how to avoid it in the future,” she wrote. “But to be clear, the offending quote was from a student on campus, not a Prospector journalist — the Prospector was merely reporting what the student said.”
In a statement on the Prospector’s website, the student journalists said their intent was for the listicle to “expose things that are said on campus that are inappropriate at different levels.”
“While some quotations may be innocuous or even funny, none of them were meant to be seen as light-hearted, celebrated, or condoned. Instead, we hope to hold up a mirror to our richly diverse community and expose the things we and others on campus overhear daily,” the statement reads.
The statement said the Hitler comment was made by a student who was speaking among friends and was not part of a classroom discussion.
“We do believe that addressing the quotes has sparked a much-needed conversation, but the situation has escalated into something we did not intend. … It’s deeply concerning that these remarks are being said on campus without proper action from staff,” the statement reads.
The controversy at McClatchy High School comes at a volatile time, with protests over the Israel-Hamas war roiling university campuses nationwide and student journalists providing some of the most detailed, up-to-the-minute coverage of the unrest.
At UCLA last week, four student journalists who work for the Daily Bruin were attacked — sprayed with Mace and pummeled — by pro-Israeli counterdemonstrators who violently clashed with pro-Palestinian demonstrators in an encampment on campus.
The decision by the Prospector staff to publish the quote also comes amid a surge in antisemitism on school campuses — as well as a rise in vandalism at synagogues and Jewish stores, restaurants and institutions. There also has been a rise in Islamophobia and anti-Muslim sentiment and attacks nationwide.
Jay Schenirer, president of Congregation B’Nai Israel, a synagogue in the same neighborhood as McClatchy High School, told The Times that children and teenagers in his congregation were hurting and scared because of the rhetoric at their schools and that they were taking the publication of the pro-Hitler quote seriously.
It was particularly alarming, he said, that the quote was published in a list of seemingly lighthearted quotes.
“It’s hard to imagine anyone would find this funny,” said Schenirer, a former Sacramento City Council member whose adult children attended McClatchy.
On Sunday, he said, some 70 people attended a meeting at Congregation B’Nai Israel to discuss the incident, antisemitism at local schools, and how to make sure students feel safe.
They composed a list of recommendations for schools, including: designating an adult to whom students can report incidents of antisemitism; “provide administrators with additional education about free speech and where is the line, when it is crossed, and how to deal with it”; and standardizing high school ethnic studies curriculum throughout the district.
Schenirer said he had spoken multiple times with Principal Egan since the student newspaper’s publication of the offensive quote.
“We need to take this seriously,” he said. “We can’t stand by on the sidelines. We need to be very proactive about this.”
Amid steeply escalating school crime, drug use and fighting, individual Los Angeles public school campuses should be allowed to decide whether to station a police officer on campus, a safety task force said, a recommendation that, if adopted, would reverse wins by anti-police student activists but respond to calls by many parents to restore officers.
Recent practice in the L.A. Unified School District has been to keep police off campus. Instead, school police — a department paid for and operated by the school system — patrol areas around schools and respond to emergency calls off and on campus.
The task force, established by the Board of Education, has operated quietly during the current school year against a backdrop of rising fights on campus and difficulty controlling vaping and the use of serious drugs, such as fentanyl, which killed a student on campus in 2022. District data show a sharp rise in what the school system refers to as reported incidents.
The latest data leave out the two peak-pandemic years of 2019-20 and 2020-21 because students were learning from home for all or much of the time. But with that caveat, incidents under “Fighting/Physical Aggression” have climbed every year since 2017-18, despite declining enrollment. Incidents especially surged once students returned from remote instruction.
Before the pandemic, in 2017-18, there were 2,270 such incidents; the next year, also pre-pandemic, recorded a 2% rise to 2,315. Then came the pandemic and remote learning. After on-campus instruction resumed, these incidents increased 28% in 2021-22 and by 54% year over year in 2022-23.
Brenda Fernandez, an LAUSD staff member, listens in between writing down notes from parents concerned about school safety during a meeting May 2 at Patrick Henry Middle School.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Put another way, during the two full years since police were removed from campus, incidents of fights and physical aggression rose to 4,569 from 2,315, almost doubling. And as of April 15, with about two months left in the school year, the number was higher still — at 4,786.
It was on April 15 that tension at Washington Preparatory High School in South L.A. boiled over in an after-school confrontation a few blocks from campus. A student fending off at least five other students pulled out a gun and opened fire. A 15-year-old died.
In that incident, a nonpolice school-safety worker, part of the “safe passages” program, allegedly declined to intervene when approached by students just before the fight began.
“One student died because safe passages does not work,” said Diane Guillen, a leader on a key district parent advisory council. She said a parents group is going to have at least 2,000 signatures calling for a restoration of school police to present to the Board of Education at Tuesday’s meeting, when the task force’s recommendations will be presented.
The school board is not expected to take immediate action, but L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho is developing a revised safety plan, part of which may require the board’s authorization.
At an April meeting of the Board of Education, more than two dozen parents called for increased police staffing and the return of officers to campuses.
A chart from a Los Angeles school board committee meeting in April indicates that incidents among students involving suicide risk, fighting, weapons and illegal/controlled substances have risen steeply since students returned to in-person instruction after pandemic campus closures.
Any member of the public could participate in the task force, but most involved appear to have been district employees — including within the school police — as well as community members and parents who are not anti-police. The outgoing head of the school administrators union, Nery Paiz, also took part. No anti-police activists attended the task force’s April meeting.
Anti-police student activists and professional organizers working with them are likely to have a presence Tuesday at the Board of Education meeting. They typically have speakers at board meetings at least once a month and stage rallies at least twice a year. The anti-police effort also is backed by the leadership of the politically influential teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles.
Although celebrating that action, activists wanted more — the complete elimination of school police — and are angry at what they see as broken promises and backsliding: The school police budget has crept upward, pulled along by districtwide salary increases and higher costs. Overall, police staffing remains at a reduced level.
Before the cuts, a high school typically would have one full-time officer and two middle schools would share one officer.
In the recently released data, the categories of “suicide risk” and “illegal/controlled substances” also showed small rises in the last year of the on-campus police presence — suggesting that all was not well even with officers assigned to schools. But as with the fighting, during the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years, the district experienced sharp rises in the number of incidents.
In two categories, threats and weapons, the numbers were lower in 2018-19 but then rose over the last two years.
Cause and effect related to school police is difficult to determine because so many factors are at play. Student mental health issues, for example, worsened across the nation in the wake of the pandemic and there were widespread — largely anecdotal — reports of increased campus fighting. It’s hard to know the extent to which the L.A. Unified data reflect the lack of police, post-pandemic stressesor other factors.
It’s also hard to evaluate the consistency of incident reporting. The school system has long refused to release even redacted incident reports that would permit an independent assessment. Nor will the district release information about incidents in relation to specific campuses.
Marcos Tapia holds a card for the school safety meeting at Patrick Henry Middle School on Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Granada Hills.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
Last year, student activists at Dorsey High in South L.A. said that they felt safer, more respected and better able to focus on coursework thanks to the removal of the school’s police officer and the addition of more counselors.
Last week, more than 100 parents attended a school safety town hall at Patrick Henry Middle School in Granada Hills. At this meeting, parents called for more police, but also acknowledged the complexity of the problem.
Several parents focused, for example, on what they said was ineffective behavior management by school staff, poor communication with families and the district policy to avoid student suspensions. Parents complained that children were being bullied and beaten — only to see the perpetrators continue at school and in their classes as though nothing had happened.
Avoiding suspensions is not meant to be the same as avoiding consequences. Ideally, students who are acting improperly are counseled and taught to take responsibility for their actions and to make things right through a “restorative justice” process. This is widely viewed as an alternative to heavy-handed discipline and suspensions that can interfere with learning and increase the number of dropouts.
But the uniform success of restorative methods has been called into question even by school board President Jackie Goldberg, who strongly supports these reforms in concept.
Carvalho said the safety dynamic is more nuanced than simply pro-police or anti-police.
“Good systems understand the culture within schools — are able to anticipate and solve some of these issues before they happen,” he said. “It’s about supervision. It’s also about engagement with parents. It’s also about providing kids an opportunity for outlets within their own communities.”
“We need to go deeper,” he said. “It cannot just be pro-police or against police. That is not an approach that alone will solve the issue.”
About 20 UCLA faculty members protested Saturday night outside the UCLA Hammer Museum’s celebrity-heavy gala, calling for amnesty to be granted to pro-Palestinian students arrested on campus this week and demanding that Chancellor Gene Block resign immediately.
As a well-heeled crowd in cocktail attire filed into the museum for the annual Gala in the Garden, sipping bespoke cocktails and noshing on small bites from passed trays, English department professor Jonathan Grossman blamed Block for what he and his colleagues said were dual wrongs done to pro-Palestinian student activists. On Wednesday, they said, students received unnecessarily rough treatment from police as their encampment was cleared. The night before, he said, police failed to protect the same students from violent counterprotesters’ attacks.
Elizabeth O’Brien, a professor in the history department, said she was present Tuesday night and witnessed “a horrifying mob” attack pro-Palestinian students for four hours.
“Along with a colleague, I begged the police to intervene,” O’Brien said. “A police officer threatened us with a weapon in response to our pleas to protect the students from the mob.”
O’Brien showed what she said was an X-ray of broken bones in one of her student’s hands.
“She was just protesting peacefully, and they shot her with rubber bullets,” O’Brien said, adding, “Chancellor Block failed egregiously to protect the students.”
UCLA’s police chief, John Thomas, denied allegations of security lapses and said he did everything he could to keep students safe. In a statement, Block described the attack on pro-Palestinian protesters as “a dark chapter in our campus’s history” and said the university was re-examining its procedures as a result.
The Hammer’s gala, which usually draws one of the starriest crowds in L.A.’s museum fund-raising circuit, had a confirmed guest list that a spokesperson said included Jane Fonda, Ava DuVernay, Keanu Reeves, Will Ferrell, Joel McHale and Owen Wilson. Singer k.d. lang was scheduled to perform.
Jodie Foster was on hand to honor Ann Philbin, the longtime Hammer director who has announced her forthcoming retirement. Before introducing Philbin, Foster acknowledged the Gaza protests at UCLA as well as at other universities around the country. Speaking out, Foster said, is what the arts are all about.
“We’re all so keenly aware of what’s happening in the world and the protests,” Philbin said to the gala crowd, adding that the violence on UCLA’s campus tempered the joy of the evening. “I recognize what a difficult time this is for celebration and I appreciate that you’re all here.”
She added later: “We will defend the sacrosanct right to freedom of expression and the right to protest.”
Times staff writer Teresa Watanabe contributed to this report.
With the help of bulldozers, items including tents, chairs and yoga mats were removed Thursday morning from the UCLA encampment occupied by pro-Palestinian protesters and shoved into a large gray dumpster.
Packages of unopened plastic water bottles lay on the grass. Nearby, two white trucks held pieces of wood that had been used by protesters to barricade the camp. A group of four UCLA graduate students walked over to Dickson Court, the area on campus where the encampment once stood, carrying medical masks and other supplies for protesters, only to learn the camp had been taken down.
They decided they would give the donations to one of the other Southern California universities with encampments.
Such camps have spread to college campuses across the nation in a student movement unlike any other this century. Protesters are calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza. On Tuesday, police arrested at least 25 protesters at Cal Poly Humboldt, where war demonstrators had taken over buildings, spurring school officials to close campus.
“I think it’s really important to stand up for what you believe in,” said a 29-year-old UCLA graduate student who requested anonymity because of the fear of reprisals. “I’ve been here a few times to give donations to people here in the encampment, and every single time, people have met me with grace and a lot of respect.”
She and her friends have brought donations of water, chips, masks and protective eyewear to the protesters throughout the week.
“I feel honored that our school is partaking in something that’s making a difference, hopefully,” said a 24-year-old graduate student who was part of the group.
Outside Dickson Court, pro-Israeli students also gathered to watch the clean-up process.
A 20-year-old UCLA undergrad, who requested anonymity because he said he feared being attacked, participated in a counterprotest on Sunday. A crowd of people from the Jewish community gathered in front of the camp and sang the Israeli national anthem, brought out a DJ and held a dance party, he said.
The undergrad, who said he is Jewish, was disheartened by the encampment, he said. But he stressed that he didn’t participate in any of the other counterdemonstrations and condemned the violence that began Tuesday night just before midnight.
Over several hours, counterdemonstrators hurled objects — including wood and a metal barrier — at those inside. Fireworkers were launched into the camp, and some counterprotesters tried to force their way in. Fights broke out, and the pro-Palestinian side used pepper spray to defend themselves.
“It was deplorable,” the undergrad said of the attack on the encampment. Violent counterprotesters “need to be punished under the maximum extent of the law. They do not represent our movement, and as such they must be punished for not acting in accordance with the law and the values they purport to uphold.”
He said he’d lost a lot of friends since the Israel-Hamas war broke out because of their different perspectives.
“It’s unfortunate because, for me, this is quite personal because I am from the Middle East,” he said. “I have family in Israel, I have family in Iran, and seeing the chaos break out in the region where my ancestry is from, it’s cutting to see individuals who have no connection to the ongoing violence say that I don’t know what I’m talking about or they can’t be friends with me because of their political stance.”
With the camp now razed, some protesters told The Times on Thursday they feared the pro-Palestinian protest’s momentum in Westwood might have stalled.
“There’s a lot of anger and frustration and desire to keep protesting, but we’re really still figuring out what that would look like,” said a 19-year-old UCLA freshman who declined to give her name.
Many seemed eager to return to protesting at UCLA, though what awaited them was unclear. A current and former student from Occidental College said they’d heeded “a call for bodies” at UCLA put out Wednesday night but figured they wouldn’t be called again with the encampment gone.
Some staff seemed more optimistic the protests would quickly be revived.
“I might go back on Friday,” said a staff member who was arrested Thursday, though she noted her plans might be dampened by sleep deprivation. When she was arrested, she said she was standing with 10 to 15 faculty or staff who were booked along with her.
Like many on Friday, the staff member declined to give her name due to fear of retaliation from the university, saying she worked in a part of the school where some colleagues seemed wary of the protests.
Some students said they were unclear whether they would face academic repercussions from protesting — although they said they’d seen some unambiguous emails from the university saying there could be “disciplinary action including suspension or expulsion.”
The noise — unsettling and dissonant — has been a constant inside the barricaded pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA.
Soon after protesters, most of them students at the Westwood campus, pitched tents on Dickson Court on April 25, pro-Israel counterdemonstrators showed up with megaphones. Some shouted racist, homophobic and anti-Islamic slurs, according to campers interviewed.
They set up a giant video screen near the camp that played and replayed videos of Hamas militants. They broadcast a running torrent of loud, disturbing sounds over a stereo — an eagle screeching, a child crying — and blasted a Hebrew rendition of the song “Baby Shark” on repeat, late at night, so that campers could not sleep.
They returned night after night.
A woman kneels in prayer before a line of CHP officers at a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles)
Inside the encampment, pro-Palestinian protesters, who occupied scores of tents on the grassy expanse, said they tried to maintain a tranquil space during the daylight hours when they felt some sense of control. They led Islamic prayers, observed Shabbat and hosted grief circles that included breath work and trauma therapy.
“It’s still an emotional, heavy space, but it’s also a very open, welcoming and loving space,” said Marie, a 28-year-old graduate student who, like many protesters interviewed, declined to provide her full name because she feared for her safety, physically and online. “Unfortunately, we experience the harassment and the terrorizing at night, which can be really upsetting.”
On Tuesday night, Dickson Court exploded into savagery and chaos. A large, mostly male crowd of masked counterdemonstrators tried to break into the encampment, ripping down wood and metal barriers, spraying bear mace, igniting stink bombs and tossing fireworks near the camp perimeter — and in at least one case inside the camp.
They aimed their green lasers at camper’s faces, prompting shouts of, “Shield your eyes!”
“They attacked us from physical and psychological fronts,” said Mona, a third-year student who also declined to provide her last name. “The outside aggressors have been working hard to create a harsh environment and make us feel unsafe.”
A pro-Palestinian protester, second from right, is assaulted by pro-Israel counterdemonstrators at a UCLA encampment.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
After Tuesday’s late-night melee — and a slow campus response that a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office called “unacceptable” — the encampment remained. And the pro-Palestinian protesters, who are demanding divestment from Israel and an end to the country’s military actions in Gaza, were defiant.
Kaia Shah, 23, a postgraduate researcher who has acted as a spokesperson for the encampment, said demonstrators got notice Tuesday from a university liaison that the encampment was unlawful and that students who continued to occupy the space could face suspension or expulsion.
Nonetheless, she said, “We plan on staying here until we get UCLA to divest.”
Shah described the scene Tuesday night as “violent and terrifying chaos,” and said her throat burned from inhaling all the mace in the air. She and another female demonstrator said some of the counterprotesters threatened to sexually assault women inside the encampment.
Shah said that, at one point, she saw police cars — it was unclear from which agency — pull up, turn around in a circle and leave. “The cops came and left as we were getting violently attacked by the Zionists,” she said.
Dueling chants rang out.
Pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA huddle behind a makeshift barricade under attack by pro-Israel counterdemonstrators.
(Michael Blackshire / Los Angeles Times)
From inside the camp, they shouted: “Free, free Palestine!” and “Hold the line for Palestine!”
Outside, some counterdemonstrators screamed: “Second Nakba!” referring to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Others chanted: “USA! USA!”
As the violence unfolded, Citlali, a 25-year-old from Santa Ana who works for the organization Youth Organize! California and declined to provide her last name, said she frantically texted her younger brother, a student who was inside the encampment.
“Hey can you answer? Are you okay?? It’s okay to retreat,” she texted.
She said her brother was sprayed with bear mace and left the encampment Wednesday morning to wash up in his dorm room. “It’s gut-wrenching,” Citlali said. “I couldn’t sleep until 4 a.m. when he texted me that he was OK.”
After sunrise Wednesday, the UCLA chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine posted a list of their needs at the encampment: gas masks, skater helmets, shields, “super bright flashlights with strobe,” EpiPens, inhalers, hot lunches, gluten-free food.
Campus security teams, faculty members and California Highway Patrol officers guarded entrances to the encampment Wednesday morning.
Hannah Appel, an assistant professor of anthropology, stood at one entrance, where people dropped off medical supplies, face masks and water bottles. Only students with wrist bands indicating they were previously in the encampment and those who had someone on the inside vouching for them were allowed to enter, Appel said.
“Because of the escalated violence last night, we have to be very vigilant and careful about who can come in and out,” Appel said, before stepping aside to let a student squeeze through the barricades.
Vanessa Muros, an archaeology researcher at UCLA, showed up outside the encampment with finger cymbals, maracas and a tambourine. She said a call was sent out to students and faculty who participated in a band during a 2022 UC academic workers’ strike. The musicians were asked to help boost morale at the encampment.
“Apparently morale is low in there, and playing music or just making noise will help rally people together,” she said.
Pro-Palestinian protesters clash with pro-Israel counterdemonstrators at a UCLA encampment.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Muros has worked at UCLA for 19 years and said she has never seen such mayhem on campus. “It’s upsetting, and I feel like the administration will blame the chaos on the students who have been peacefully protesting,” she said.
Renee Tajima-Peña, a senior faculty member, stood in a line outside Royce Hall to make a donation for the protesters: solar phone chargers, a poncho, some respirators.
“The story has been that all these students are irresponsible or causing problems,” she said. “I teach here and this encampment has been beautiful.”
Before dawn Tuesday, more than 100 law enforcement officers in riot gear marched into the quad of Cal Poly Humboldt, clutching guns and batons.
They encircled a small group of protesters — including a furry one in a lime-green costume — who knelt on the ground, holding hands and reciting native chants.
“Resistance is justified!” the crowd yelled as officers informed them they were being arrested before pulling them up, one by one, and fastening their hands with zip ties.
The scene capped an extraordinary weeklong protest at this public university that has emerged as California’s strongest epicenter of civil disobedience over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
Students at the state’s major campuses, including USC and Berkeley, have made the news over the last week. But Cal Poly Humboldt, tucked at the base of a redwood forest in rural Northern California and home to 5,976 students in Arcata, has taken on an out-sized role. Students have engaged in more vigorous disruption, occupying an academic and administrative building, painting buildings with graffiti and twice forcing police to retreat.
Humboldt is one of the smallest and most isolated of the Cal State schools, a hub for students in the rural towns and former logging communities of California’s far north coast and interior.
Yet those on campus understand why it has become such flashpoint.
Faculty leaders say activism is in the college’s DNA, noting that students and professors have practiced nonviolent civil disobedience for more than half a century — from the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s to the forest defense movement of the 1980s and 1990s.
“People ask, ‘Well, why do they occupy? Why don’t they do what everybody else does and sit outside in tents?’ ” said Anthony Silvaggio, the chair of the sociology department.
“It’s because we’re Humboldt,” he said, noting that as a graduate student in 1997 he was arrested during the Headwaters Campaign to save the last remaining old-growth redwood forests. “We occupy space! We have a rich history of taking over space and a long genealogy of direct-action tactics.”
After resisting multiple attempts by police in riot gear to remove them from a building, students renamed it “Intifada Hall.” They scrawled slogans such as “land back,” “destroy all colonial walls” and “pigs not allowed” up and down its corridors and wrote “BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS” across the wood-paneled walls of President Tom Jackson Jr.’s office.
They said they would not leave until the university disclosed all holdings and collaborations with Israel, cut all ties with Israeli universities, divested from companies “complicit in the occupation of Palestine” and publicly called for a cease-fire. They also called for the dropping of any legal charges against student organizers.
Jackson said Tuesday “it breaks my heart” to see arrests. “Unfortunately, serious criminal activity that crossed the line well beyond the level of a protest had put the campus at ongoing risk.”
But some faculty and students reject that narrative, accusing administrators and authorities of escalating a peaceful situation by bringing in riot police the first evening of the occupation. The closure of the entire campus, they argue, was unnecessary.
“These are the actions of conscientious individuals working to end a genocide, not the actions of criminals,” the faculty union, the university chapter of the California Faculty Assn., said in a statement
One of the activists arrested, assistant professor Rouhollah Aghasaleh, vowed to reject any bond and embark on a hunger strike until he and all his students were released.
“I refuse to accept the label of criminal for standing up for an ethical reason.” he wrote in a statement before his arrest. ::
At the heart of the showdown is a dispute that stretches beyond the Middle East to the question of how central activism is to the university’s mission.
Faculty leaders blame Jackson, who became president in 2019 and has overseen the university’s transition to a polytechnic. The new designation, made in 2022, was designed to increase sagging enrollment with high-demand STEM education and research offerings.
Officials hope the changes will result in a better university. But critics accuse Jackson of being out of sync with campus culture and failing to appreciate the university’s long history of environmental and social justice activism.
According to Silvaggio, Jackson has ruffled feathers by telling faculty, “We’re not here to train activists.”
Silvaggio — who said he learned tactics of non-violent civil disobedience from his professors, who were activists on the defense of native forests — now teaches courses in community organizing and social movements.
He noted that last week was hardly the first occupation of a Humboldt campus building: In 2015, students occupied the university’s Native American Forum for a week to protest the abrupt firing of the then-chair of the Indian Natural Resource Science & Engineering Program.
At the time, the university’s president visited the sit-in to talk to students, praising their action as “a real demonstration of your commitment to student access, achievement and completion.”
“Look at our mission,” Silvaggio said, pointing to the university’s purpose and vision statement, which commits to being a “campus for those who seek above all else to improve the global human condition.” It also commits to “partnering with indigenous communities to address the legacy of colonialism.”
Still, the occupation involved far more disruption than the one in 2015. Supporters of the movement acknowledge that they have developed bolder tactics and become more willing to eschew rules and leaders in the last decade with the coalescing of movements such as Black Lives Matter and the Black Bloc.
“There is no organization or leader,” Silvaggio said. “When these rudderless movements happen, you’re gonna have property destruction, vandalism. That’s the natural course of occupations these days.”
::
The occupation of Cal Poly Humboldt began April 22 when students showed up at Siemens Hall, an academic building that includes the university president’s office, with sleeping bags, board games and decks of cards. They barricaded the entrance with chairs and tables and erected a banner that said, “STOP THE GENOCIDE.”
Students planned a peaceful sit-in in the president’s office to protest Israel’s actions in Gaza, said a 23-year-old student from San Jose who asked to be known only as “Mango” because he feared retaliation. Transgender indigenous students started holding a prayer, he said, and then police showed up and started hitting.
The university gave a different account, saying students and faculty had to be evacuated as protesters disrupted classes and vandalized university property. In addition to defacing the building with graffiti, the university said, protesters blocked entrances and elevators with tents and in some locations shut doors using chains and zip ties, violating fire codes and “creating extreme safety hazards for those inside.”
Video taken from inside showed protesters blocked law enforcement from entering, a police officer beat a protester with a baton and a protester beat an officer’s helmet with an empty five-gallon water jug — a scene that swiftly turned viral, inspiring “jug of justice” memes with the catchphrase “Bonk the police.”
Three students were arrested. Citing safety concerns, officials announced a hard closure of campus, first through last Wednesday, then Sunday, and eventually for the rest of the semester.
Hundreds of students living on campus were told they could leave their dorms only if they had a valid reason and could be cited for trespassing.
Aaron Donaldson, a lecturer in the communications department and secretary of the faculty union, said students who tried to leave campus to get groceries complained of confrontations with police. He had 50 outlines to grade, but could not go get them for fear of arrest.
After another standoff Friday — police moved in that evening to enforce an order to disperse, students resisted and police ultimately withdrew — the university again condemned activists, claiming the occupation “has nothing to do with free speech or freedom of inquiry.”
But the administration said it would “continue to talk to anyone willing to have productive and respectful dialogue.”
In a gesture of good faith, the occupiers moved out of Siemens Hall on Sunday, clearing the building and moving their occupation to outdoor space.
::
By Monday afternoon, the tree-lined campus with glimmering views of Humboldt Bay had the feel of a nearly deserted, surreal summer camp.
Activists in pink, brown, and white furry costumes roamed outside the main administration building and quad, which was encircled with barricades of chairs, tables, trash bins and fencing.
After a faculty led teach-in about ablism, there was a march, followed by a Passover seder. As some munched matzo, others chanted: “From the river to the sea.”
As dusk fell, some activists put on goggles and helmets, carried makeshift shields, jangled tambourines and beat drums as they prepared for another standoff with law enforcement.
Just after 9:30 p.m., a patrol car rolled through campus, broadcasting a recorded message urging demonstrators to immediately disperse. If they did not move, protesters could face rubber bullets and chemical spray.
“Cops off campus!” the crowd chanted in unison.
Many faculty, barred from campus, massed on the street outside, saying they wanted to bear witness to what was happening to their students.
Dominic Corva, a professor of sociology, said he blamed Cal Poly Humboldt’s president for creating conditions that led to the standoff.
“This [university] has a president … completely at odds with [the] culture and pedagogy of the university,” Corva said. “His actions have escalated the situation.”
Jackson could not be reached for comment Tuesday. But in a statement, he said: “Our focus for the entire time has been on doing all we could do to protect the safety of all involved, and we were very patient and very disciplined with that.”
Donaldson said the standoff between activists and administrators had reinforced some key lessons of the social advocacy class he taught this semester: Direct democracy, he said, is fundamentally about non-violence and is never convenient; the point is to interrupt and to stop and to say, “Wait, we have to talk and pay attention.”
For Rick Toledo, 32, a student organizer on campus who did not occupy the building but supported the movement, the most pressing concern Tuesday morning was raising $10,000 per person for bail.
There had been some conflicts among activists over strategy and the value of graffiti, Toledo said. But in the course of the occupation, they had tried to come to a consensus and develop some rules.
“When you have varying ideologies and no strict guidelines, clashes are bound to happen,” Toledo said.
Going forward, Toledo hoped activists could develop guidelines before they occupied again.
“The movement can’t die here,” he said. “There’s so much pain in Palestine. What the students have done is huge and we need to keep that momentum.”
When USC President Carol Folt called off the 65,000-attendee “main stage” commencement amid pro-Palestinian protests and anger over the cancellation of pro-Palestinian student Asna Tabassum’s speaking slot, USC promised that more than two dozen satellite graduation ceremonies for individual colleges would continue as planned.
But on Sunday, two high-profile speakers scheduled to address graduates of the USC Rossier School of Education said they were dropping out in dismay at the university’s actions, including calling in the Los Angeles Police Department to arrest 93 pro-Palestinian protesters — many of them undergraduate students — last week.
“To speak at USC in this moment would betray not only our own values, but USC’s too,” novelist C Pam Zhang and UCLA professor and author Safiya U. Noble wrote to Folt, Provost Andrew T. Guzman and university leaders. “We are withdrawing as commencement speakers.”
The pair, who posted their announcement on the Literary Hub website and also sent a copy to USC officials on Sunday, have called on the dozens of remaining keynote speakers at satellite commencements to join them in a boycott.
“Asna’s removal, the administration’s refusal to engage in dialogue with student protestors, and the decision to invite LAPD forces onto campus, represent a violent and targeted refusal to allow true diversity of expression to flourish on campus,” the letter said.
“Our withdrawal is in no way a condemnation of USC’s graduating class, who deserve to be celebrated; nor do we condemn the countless USC faculty, staff, students, and administrators whose views are not represented by university leadership’s authoritarian decision-making,” it said.
Zhang, an award-winning author of “How Much of These Hills Is Gold” and “Land of Milk and Honey,” was scheduled to speak at the May 8 education school doctoral hooding ceremony.Noble, a 2021 MacArthur Foundation Fellow and UCLA professor who wrote “Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism,” was supposed to speak at the school’s May 10 master’s ceremony.
The pair’s refusal to participate in commencement ceremonies is the latest fallout from USC‘s controversial April 15 decision to uninvite Tabassum from its main stage.
The university said it made the decision after receiving threats in response to a link on Tabassum’s Instagram profile. The link said Zionism was “racist” and that Palestinian freedom would require “the complete abolishment of the state of Israel” so that “both Arabs and Jews can live together.” Pro-Israel groups have called the statements antisemitic. Tabassum has said she is not antisemitic.
Protesters are detained by LAPD officers who were trying to clear the USC campus during a demonstration against the war in Gaza on Wednesday.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles)
On-campus protests followed and four days later, the university canceled its “main stage” commencement address by “Crazy Rich Asians” director Jon M. Chu and rescinded invitations to honorary degree recipients — including tennis star Billie Jean King — to appear on stage.
Then, on Wednesday, police arrested dozens of people after pro-Palestinian demonstrators encamped in the center of campus and demanded that USC disclose and divest in any financial holdings connected to the manufacture of weaponry used in the Israel-Hamas war.
On Friday, USC said the main ceremony was canceled because new security screenings would make it impossible to process crowds in time. It also instituted new ticket limits.
Several high-profile speakers are still scheduled to appear at satellite commencement events. They include Colombian American singer-songwriter Kali Uchis, who will speak May 10 at the USC Thornton School of Music, as well as actor and activist Sean Penn, who will talk the next day to graduates of the Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Science.
Tensions rose on the USC campus Saturday after pro-Palestinian protesters returned with tents and reestablished an encampment in Alumni Park, where 93 people were arrested on Wednesday.
They beat drums and put up banners reading “Free Palestine,” “We are all Gaza,” and “Stop Funding Genocide.”
Shortly after 8 p.m., the university announced that it had closed its main campus to the public.
“Due to a disturbance, the University Park Campus is temporarily closed except for residents,” USC said on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.
The school said the disturbance was at the center of campus and urged people to “please avoid that part area until further notice.”
The university’s Department of Public Safety sent text alerts to students saying the campus “was temporarily closed except for residents.”
The Los Angeles Police Department, which had issued a tactical alert Saturday evening, sent dozens of squad cars to the campus Saturday night. They arrived with lights flashing, and students said the officers had handcuffs and zip ties.
Later, students said they saw the police leave the area, while dozens of protesters ate dinner and settled into their tents.
“Things have been quiet. Nothing has escalated. We’re anticipating it might, but it has been quiet,” Anusha S., a journalism student who posted updates on a live blog for USC Annenberg Media, said in an interview.
The student journalists reported that LAPD officers unfurled yellow caution tape next to the Seeley G. Mudd building and said the area was being turned into a potential “command post.”
Late Saturday night, LAPD confirmed that their “tactical alert” had ended.
The protests are aimed at supporting Palestinians in Gaza who have been suffering since Israel launched a retaliatory war on the territory in response to the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that killed 1,200 people, with another 240 taken hostage. Gaza health authorities say Israeli forces have killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, and the United Nations says roughly 2 million civilians there are now living in near-famine conditions.
Students who belong to a group called the Divest from Death Coalition have made demands including an immediate ceasefire, divesting from Israeli companies and protecting free speech on campus.
Earlier this week, a masked USC student who self-identified as Jewish said during a news conference with other coalition members: “We will continue to call for an end to USC’s ties to Israel and investments in militarism abroad.”
Amid the protests, a symbol of the university was vandalized on Saturday. Photos appeared on social media showing the words “Say no to genocide” in bright red on the granite pedestal of university’s iconic Tommy Trojan statue, and a video appeared to catch the spray-painting as it happened.
(In an initial photo posted Saturday afternoon, the word genocide was missing the final “e.” It was apparently added later.)
A man who witnessed the tagging recorded a video of a masked woman leaving the area. As she was walking away, he followed her and asked, “Why’d you tag Tommy Trojan, huh?”
She held up her middle finger and said, “Because I can.”
He replied, “No, that’s called vandalism.”
“I don’t really care,” she said as she walked away.
Times staff writer Jaweed Kaleem contributed to this report.
Pro-Palestinian protests grew Thursday at California colleges and universities, including a new encampment at UCLA and demonstrations at UC Santa Barbara, a day after police in riot gear arrested 93 protesters at USC.
Fallout over the Israel-Hamas war grew Thursday as USC announced that it would cancel its main stage commencement ceremony after more than a week of national controversy over its decision to pull a pro-Palestinian valedictorian’s speaking slot from the May event that was expected to draw 65,000 attendees.
The university cited new safety measures, saying that the “time needed to process the large number of guests coming to campus will increase substantially.”
Dozens of smaller graduation ceremonies and celebrations at USC will continue under a new ticket policy and security checks.
At Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata, the campus remained closed and classes shifted online, with pro-Palestinian students occupying multiple buildings since Monday night.
And at UC Berkeley, 50 tents remained up by Sproul Hall, the historic home of the campus’ free speech movement. On their fourth day of a “Free Palestine Camp,” students called for the university to divest its endowment from weapons manufacturers tied to Israel.
Tensions were high at USC, where the campus was rocked at the end of the semester by President Carol Folt’s decision to cancel the valedictorian’s speech and then a commencement address by film director Jon M. Chu, before calling off the main commencement altogether.
An encampment that launched before sunrise Wednesday morning at Alumni Park grew to about 200 protesters — students, faculty and outsiders — before the late-night arrests by the LAPD. By Thursday morning, the encampment had been cleared, with campus security picking up the remaining tents and signs.
On Thursday, the university fenced off the park — the site of the called-off commencement — to set up a brunch for 2024 graduates scheduled for Friday morning. There were no protesters and few signs of Wednesday’s unrest, besides chalk messages on nearby sidewalks in support of Palestinians.
The campus remains closed to the public through weekend, and professors have moved classes online.
“This is a series of poor decisions by USC, from banning the valedictorian to calling in police to arrest peaceful students,” said Luke, a USC sophomore who was arrested Wednesday night and released early Thursday morning. “I don’t know what this university thinks it’s doing, because none of it makes sense.”
Luke did not share his last name because he said he was worried about his safety and repercussions to his enrollment at USC, where campus safety officers on Wednesday told students that they could face discipline for violating rules over camping and use of amplified sound.
Amelia Jones, a professor at the Roski School of Art and Design who joined faculty in protesting on Wednesday, said there was a growing “lack of trust” at USC between the administration, faculty and students.
“They just massively escalated by calling in LAPD,” she said.
A Jewish community group condemned the USC protests, while a Muslim civil rights group condemned the arrests.
“While students have a right to protest, they do not have the right to intimidate or threaten Jewish students,” said a statement from USC’s Hillel. “Today’s events on campus included a protest action that again employed antisemitic chants including ‘there is only one solution, intifada revolution’ and ‘long live the intifada.’ These actions reflect a disturbing and quickly escalating situation nationally and on our own campus at USC.”
In another statement, the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations spoke out against the arrests of peaceful protesters.
“It is deeply concerning that USC’s response to students demonstrating peacefully in solidarity with Palestine is forcible suppression of free speech and assembly,” said CAIR-LA legal director Amr Shabaik. “This mirrors a nationwide trend of colleges and universities attempting to censor pro-Palestine advocacy on campuses.”
At UCLA, about 100 students, faculty, staff and alumni occupied the Palestine Solidarity Encampment on Thursday with more than 20 tents surrounded by wooden pallets and protest signs.
The effort was organized by UC Divest Coalition, which was made up of several student groups.
Outside Royce Hall, students and others stood in line to check in before entering the encampment.
Participants said they had seen minimal police presence — mostly officers passing by in squad cars.
Marie Salem, 28, a graduate student studying public health, said the encampment is a community of people demanding a change from UC administrators.
“It’s about our community realizing that we no longer can go to a university that is complicit in genocide, and we no longer can go to a university that is invested in this genocide of the Gazans,” Salem said.
George Dutton, a professor of Asian language and cultures, said he and others wanted to observe the protest to ensure that students can safely practice their 1st Amendment rights.
Dutton said it was “deeply disturbing” to see a large police presence on campuses across America this past week as students protest the war in Gaza.
At UC Santa Barbara, hundreds occupied the student resources building Thursday for a daylong series of workshops, art projects and other actions to express solidarity with Palestinians, call for a cease-fire and demand an end to Israel-related investments.
A few tents were set up inside the building, but no encampment is planned, said Bisnupriya Ghosh, a professor of English and global studies and member of Academics for Justice in Palestine. She added that no police were present, and the event was proceeding peacefully.
“It’s centered around education about Israel-Palestine, as well as antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of racism and hate,” Ghosh said.
Times staff writers Melissa Gomez, Jenny Jarvie and Teresa Watanabe contributed to this report.
Saying “tradition must give way to safety,” the University of Southern California on Monday made the unprecedented move of barring an undergraduate valedictorian who has come under fire for her pro-Palestinian views from giving a speech at its May graduation ceremony.
The move, according to USC officials, is the first time the university has banned a valedictorian from the traditional chance to speak onstage at the annual commencement ceremony, which typically draws more than 65,000 people to the Los Angeles campus.
In a campuswide letter, USC Provost Andrew T. Guzman cited unnamed threats that have poured in shortly after the university publicized the valedictorian’s name and biography this month. Guzman said attacks against the student for her pro-Palestinian views have reached an “alarming tenor” and “escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement.”
“After careful consideration, we have decided that our student valedictorian will not deliver a speech at commencement. … There is no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement. The issue here is how best to maintain campus security and safety, period,” Guzman wrote.
The student, whom the letter does not name, is biomedical engineering major Asna Tabassum of Chino Hills. USC officials chose Tabassum from nearly 100 student applicants who had GPAs of 3.98 or higher.
But after USC President Carol Folt announced her selection, a swarm of on- and off-campus groups attacked Tabassum. They targeted her minor, resistance to genocide, as well as her pro-Palestinian views and “likes” expressed through her Instagram account.
We Are Tov, a group that uses the Hebrew word for “good” and describes itself as “dedicated to combating antisemitism,” posted Tabassum’s image on its Instagram account and said she “openly promotes antisemitic writings.” The group also criticized Tabassum for liking Instagram posts from “Trojans for Palestine.” Tabassum’s Instagram bio links to a landing page that says “learn about what’s happening in Palestine, and how to help.”
The campus group Trojans for Israel also posted on its Instagram account, calling for Folt’s “reconsideration” of Tabassum for what it described as her “antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric.” The group said Tabassum’s Instagram bio linked to a page that called Zionism a “racist settler-colonial ideology.”
In a statement, Tabassum opposed the decision, saying USC has “abandoned” her.
“Although this should have been a time of celebration for my family, friends, professors, and classmates, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian voices have subjected me to a campaign of racist hatred because of my uncompromising belief in human rights for all,” said Tabassum, who is Muslim.
“This campaign to prevent me from addressing my peers at commencement has evidently accomplished its goal: today, USC administrators informed me that the university will no longer allow me to speak at commencement due to supposed security concerns,” she wrote.
“I am both shocked by this decision and profoundly disappointed that the university is succumbing to a campaign of hate meant to silence my voice. I am not surprised by those who attempt to propagate hatred. I am surprised that my own university—my home for four years—has abandoned me.”
In an interview, Guzman said the university has been “in close contact with the student” and would “provide her support.” He added that “we weren’t seeking her opinion” on the ban.
“This is a security decision,” he said. “This is not about the identity of the speaker, it’s not about the things the valedictorian has said in the past. We have to put as our top priority ensuring that the campus and community is safe.”
Another campus official who was part of the decision, Erroll Southers, said threats came in via email, phone calls and letters. Southers is USC’s associate senior vice president for safety and risk assurance.
Individuals “say they will come to campus as early as this week,” Southers said. He did not elaborate.
Pro-Palestinian groups, including the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, have called for USC to reinvite Tabassum to speak.
“USC cannot hide its cowardly decision behind a disingenuous concern for ‘security,’” CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush said in a statement.
In another statement, the USC Palestine Justice Faculty Group said it “unequivocally rejects” Tabassum being uninvited.
“The provost’s action is another example of USC’s egregious pattern of supporting anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim racism,” the group said.
Times staff writers Jenna Peterson and Angie Orellana Hernandez contributed to this report.
Just eight months after being attacked in state prison, the man convicted of killing Kristin Smart was stabbed by another inmate and hospitalized again. The incident is being investigated as an attempted homicide.
Paul Flores, 47, was convicted in 2022 of killing Smart, a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo student last seen on campus with Flores more than 25 years ago and was sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison for first-degree murder.
On Wednesday at 3:27 p.m., staff at Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga, Calif., witnessed Flores being stabbed by another inmate on the recreation yard, a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said.
Responding officers quickly put an end to the incident without using force, according to the CDCR. Two inmate-manufactured weapons were recovered from the scene.
An injured Flores was transported to an outside medical facility for a higher level of care. He has since returned to the prison and is in fair condition.
No other staff or incarcerated people were injured.
The person who attacked Flores, whose name was not disclosed, has been placed in restricted housing as the investigation continues, the CDCR said.
The prison’s investigative services unit is looking into the incident, and the Office of the Inspector General has been notified.
CDCR has not released any other details.
The facility did not clarify whether this was the same person who stabbed Flores last August.
In the first attack, Jason Budrow, 43, stabbed Flores in the neck, causing Flores to be hospitalized for two days, the San Luis Obispo Tribune reported.
Budrow is serving two life sentences without the possibility of parole for two separate murders, one being the murder of Roger Reece Kibbe, the serial rapist and killer known as the “I-5 Strangler.”
Flores was arrested in connection to Smart’s disappearance in 2021 after San Luis Obispo County resident Chris Lambert released the “Your Own Backyard” podcast series, which unearthed information previously unseen by the local sheriff’s office.
Smart’s body has never been found. Flores was convicted in October 2022 of murder for killing Smart, his classmate, during an attempted rape in his dorm room in May 1996.
Flores’ attorney, Harold Mesick, could not be reached for comment. KSBY reported that Mesick said he plans to request that Flores be moved to another facility.
What began as a peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstration on Friday afternoon at Pomona College, quickly devolved after protesters stormed and then occupied the college president’s office. By the end of the evening, 20 students had been arrested and booked by riot-gear-wearing local police forces.
Nineteen students were charged with misdemeanor trespassing, and one with obstruction of justice, according to the Claremont Police Department. Police from Claremont, Pomona, Azusa, and La Verne responded to the scene.
The protest started over the college’s dismantling of a piece of student-erected pro-Palestinian protest art on the Claremont campus, which had been standing since March 28.
The 32-foot-long, eight-paneled “apartheid wall” outside the Smith Campus Center was a physical and artistic protest designed to highlight “the unequal treatment of the Palestinian people living under the brutal conditions of the illegal Israeli Occupation,” and underscore the administration’s refusal to heed the will of students, who voted in February for the college to divest from companies seen as aiding Israel.
“Civil disobedience and peaceful protests by students were met with tactical gear and assault rifles,” wrote members of the Claremont Consortium Faculty for Justice in Palestine in a statement about the event. “Students who are scheduled to graduate in less than a month are being threatened with suspension for non-violent protest. This response is shameful.”
A letter sent out Friday by Gabrielle Starr, the Pomona College president, described the situation as “an escalating series of incidents on our campus, which has included persistent harassment of visitors for admission tours.”
She said protesters had refused to identify themselves to campus authorities, and had verbally harassed staff, “even using a sickening, anti-black racial slur in addressing an administrator.”
On Friday morning, students were told the campus would be taking down the wall. Many students had been camping there since the wall was erected in late March, but according to Eve Oishi, a professor of cultural studies at Claremont Graduate University, had packed up and disassembled their encampment.
Oishi said she stopped by the wall late Friday morning in order to drop off books and snacks for the few students sitting at a table nearby. They requested “unhealthy snacks,” she said, because they’d been living off donated and shared granola bars for days.
The wall consisted of eight wooden panels including maps of Palestinian territory since 1946, and large lettering with phrases such as “Disrupt the Death Machine,” “Apartheid College; We are all Complicit,” and “Smash Imperialism, Long Live Int’l Solidarity.”
Oishi said the wall “was not highly unusual at all” in terms of the kinds of art, installations and protests often seen around campus. “I don’t understand why it was seen as such a threat.”
At around 1:15 p.m., college staff began to take apart the wall “in preparation for events scheduled on Sunday, and in line with our policy,” wrote Starr in a statement, describing the “occupiers” as masked — which is against college policy.
It was at this point, alleged Starr, that the students “proceeded to verbally harass campus staff” and used a racial slur.
According to a statement from the Claremont Consortium Faculty for Justice in Palestine, college staff removed half of the installation’s panels, while students “protected the other panels from removal.”
At 4 p.m., 18 of the demonstrators entered Alexander Hall, “under false pretenses,” according to Starr, and made their way up a staircase and into Starr’s office.
According to a news release from Pomona Divest Apartheid, “the 18+ students sitting in Starr’s office were barricaded in by Campus Safety Officers, who positioned themselves in front of the exits.”
Fifty more protesters spilled into the building in a second wave, after a protester unlocked a door to let them in. They occupied the hallway outside Starr’s office.
According to the Claremont Courier, local police arrived roughly an hour later in riot gear, and then exited with 19 arrested students.
Social media photos and videos of the events show police physically pushing student reporters out of the room, and closing window blinds to prevent them from documenting the situation.
The arrested students were taken to the Claremont Police Department, where a demonstration quickly grew.
At 12:20 a.m., the 20 students were released.
According to Oishi, the students were from Pomona, Scripps and Pitzer colleges. She said the students have been expelled from campus and “not allowed back into their dorm rooms. Some of them are a month away from graduation. They have no place to to stay. No way to eat, no way to get to finish their classes.”
In Starr’s statement, she wrote that any Pomona students involved in the protest would be subject to immediate suspension, whiles students from the other Claremont Colleges would be banned from Pomona’s campus and “subject to discipline on their own campuses.”
Oishi said faculty would be looking into the “due process policies that the President used extraordinary emergency powers that were not merited, given the lack of community threat.”
She said campus security had sent out an announcement saying there was no threat to the community.
“So why were heavily armed and militarized police necessary?” she said.
