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Tag: pro-Palestine protests

  • UCF changes campus protest policies following pro-Palestine demonstrations

    UCF changes campus protest policies following pro-Palestine demonstrations

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    Photo by Mauricio Murillo

    The University of Central Florida’s board of trustees last week, joining other colleges and universities across the country, adopted changes to school policies that aim to restrict protest activity on campus.

    Changes adopted Friday include language prohibiting people on-campus from “restricting the movement of others” and from wearing items such as a mask or hood in order to “intimidate” someone or otherwise conceal their identity “for the purposes of evading or escaping discovery, recognition, or identification in connection with or during the commission of a violation of law, regulation, or policy.”

    In addition, the Orlando-based public university now also prohibits people from refusing to provide identification when requested by a university official or law enforcement, and prohibits affixing or attaching displays (such as “signs, banners, posters, or flyers”) to university property without the university’s prior authorization.

    Youndy Cook, general counsel for UCF — the state’s largest university by enrollment — told the board’s six-member Governance Committee that they believe these rules “will help clarify expectations and practices, while upholding our commitment to free expression and maintaining many ways for students and others to express themselves.”

    Pursuant to state law, all “commonly available outdoor areas” of campus are available for expressive activities, Cook continued. “That’s expressive activities by students, by employees or by visitors to campus. What we’re trying to do now is be very clear on certain topics,” she explained.

    The rule on “displays,” specifically, “is addressing an ongoing — or, an issue that we were experiencing last academic year with flyers being attached inappropriately to buildings, benches, trees, posts, chairs, me,” she quipped to laughter, “You know, whatever they could find that stayed still enough.”

    These changes build on a university ban on encampments enacted this summer and a state-wide crackdown on anti-Israel bias in university courses. All notably follow a number of demonstrations organized by students in protest of Israeli force against Palestinians in the Middle East amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas War.

    Since Oct. 7, 2023, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, following an initial attack by the militant group Hamas on Israel that killed about 1,200. Despite criticism over Israel’s brutal force in Gaza, killing tens of thousands of women, children and civilians in addition to combatants, the Biden administration has approved billions of taxpayer dollars in military aid to Israel, funding what human rights experts have described as genocide. Universities, including UCF, have also been criticized for ties to weapons manufacturers and defense companies like Lockheed Martin that do business with Israel.

    When students first began organizing peaceful pro-Palestine protests and encampments on Florida university and college campuses nearly one year ago, university leadership responded with force. UCF saw few altercations between protesters and campus cops (beyond intimidation tactics).

    But, as the war and protests continued on into 2024, students at other universities — like the University of South Florida and University of Florida — faced more violent force from law enforcement. Students were tear-gassed, some arrested, and threatened with academic and legal repercussions as a result. State legislators earlier this year, meanwhile, attacked two Democrats in the Florida House who essentially just sought to symbolically condemn acts of violence on both sides of the Israel-Hamas dispute.

    Although the language of UCF’s new changes don’t directly reference Palestine or campus protests in support of Palestinians, some students suspect they’re linked.

    Koulson Fry, a UCF student, told Orlando Weekly in an email they worry the new rules are targeted and could be seen as an attempt “to silence critical voices on politically sensitive issues, preventing certain groups from expressing dissent.” They also worry that the new security rule that prohibits people from wearing items that could conceal their identity, such as masks, “excludes immunocompromised students who rely on masks for health reasons from participating in peaceful protests.”

    They also have concern requiring students to reveal their identities to law enforcement “fosters fear of retaliation or bias, discouraging participation in protests and stifling free speech on campus.” Under the changes approved by the UCF board, such requests by law enforcement or university officials must be made (and adhered to) by those “acting within the scope of their job duties or by a law enforcement officer acting in a law enforcement capacity.”

    As the New York Times reports, it’s not just UCF or even universities in Florida that are coming up with new rules perceived as an attempt to quell protest activity and free speech on campuses. Some universities have adopted new rules limiting “expressive activity” to certain times of the day (which UCF also has in place), while others have strictly banned encampments on campus property, restricted where protest activity can take place, or have updated anti-harrassment policies equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

    Fry said they were further frustrated by the fact that the UCF board held their public comment period for the agenda item two hours earlier than students had prepared for. While the meeting was scheduled to begin at 4 p.m., public comment began earlier, “with no prior notice,” according to Fry. “This caused all but one student to be unable to give their opinions,” they said. “We view this as further stifling our freedom of speech and our right to make our opinions known.”

    Courtney Gilmartin, UCF assistant vice president for Strategic Initiatives and Communications, told the Orlando Sentinel that public comment began earlier because other committee meetings had concluded earlier than expected. She also said they sent an email to those who had signed up for public comment to let them know about the changes.

    Beyond university campuses, pro-Palestinian activists in the Orlando area have continued organizing demonstrations and speaking out against violence in Gaza, as the death toll rises and broader devastation affecting the region worsens.

    As the one-year mark of the Israel-Hamas War nears, a group of pro-Palestinian activists in Orlando this week, organized with the Florida Palestine Network, officially launched what they have described as an Orlando-Palestine Week of Action. The group plans to hold a teach-in event Wednesday night, unveil a Palestinian Art Build Installation on Friday, according to a news release, and organize a protest on Saturday at an as-of-yet unspecified location.

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    McKenna Schueler

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  • Florida state officials seek crackdown on university courses containing antisemitic or ‘anti-Israel’ material

    Florida state officials seek crackdown on university courses containing antisemitic or ‘anti-Israel’ material

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    Photo by Mauricio Murillo

    UCF students gathered near the Reflecting Pond Friday, April 26, to protest Israel’s occupation of Gaza.

    State officials in charge of Florida’s state university system are seeking to crack down on “antisemitic material and/or anti-Israel bias” in certain university courses, according to an email from the State University System chancellor obtained by Orlando Weekly.

    In an email sent to state university presidents last Friday, Chancellor Ray Rodrigues, a former Republican state legislator, laid out two directives for the state’s 12 university presidents.

    The first directive, eligible for “immediate action,” is to create a faculty committee to review certain course materials — including textbooks, online materials, and test banks — ahead of the fall semester for “either antisemitic material and/or anti-Israel bias.” The second calls on university leaders to come up with a process for faculty on the committee to attest that they have indeed reviewed courses for such content.

    Courses that the directive aims to target include “courses on terrorism, Middle Eastern studies, religion, and government,” according to the email, which was sent by Rodrigues to university heads with the subject line “Follow up from Monday’s Call.”

    Such courses, Rodrigues explained, will be identified by conducting a keyword search on course descriptions and syllabi, per the suggestion of the state university system’s faculty representative, whom Rodrigues consulted.

    “Any course that contains the following keywords: Israel, Israeli, Palestine, Palestinian, Middle East, Zionism, Zionist, Judaism, Jewish, or Jews will be flagged for review,” wrote Rodrigues, who serves as the primary liaison between the Florida Board of Governors, the state Legislature, the executive branch and other state departments and agencies.

    “This process will ensure that all universities are reviewing the same courses, and nothing falls through the cracks,” Rodrigues explained.

    The state’s public university system, governed by the state Board of Governors, is made up of 12 state universities with an enrollment of more than 400,000 students.

    It’s unclear what the scope of this course review will look like system-wide, what the endgame of such a review process is, or how faculty are supposed to determine what is considered “antisemitic” or “anti-Israel.” Orlando Weekly reached out to the chancellor for clarification on the plan, but did not hear back ahead of publication.

    Amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas War in the Middle East and student protests on U.S. college and university campuses, the concept of antisemitism became something of a controversial issue earlier this year, as state lawmakers considered and then unanimously approved a bill (HB 187) revising the state’s definition of the term under state statutes.

    The bill, signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis in June, defines “antisemitism” based on the working definition developed and adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Under that definition, antisemitism is defined as:

    a certain perception of Jewish individuals which may be expressed as hatred toward such individuals. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish and non-Jewish individuals and their property and toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

    The bill, which also offers contemporary examples of antisemitism from the IHRA, explicitly excludes criticism of Israel from the state’s newly adopted antisemitism definition. The law, amended during the legislative session to add that exclusion, was unanimously approved by state lawmakers in both the Florida House and Senate. 

    Unlike the term antisemitism, there is no explicit definition of “anti-Israel” under state statutes.

    State leaders’ voiced support for Israel after the start of the Hamas-initiated war — and their denouncement of pro-Palestine sentiment among many young people — has also created rifts on several of Florida’s university campuses. Student protesters have faced criminal charges, been tear-gassed by police, and in some cases have been kicked off campus for their participation in protests organized over brutal Israeli violence against Palestinians, with a call for universities to divest from Israel.

    Two groups of students at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, the state’s largest university by enrollment, launched peaceful and short-lived student encampments in May, joining others organized by students on more than 100 university and college campuses across the country. While university police kept eyes on the UCF students, no major incidents of police intervention or violence were reported, as students generally left the encampments late at night, returning the next day.

    Rodrigues, a former state legislator appointed to his role by the Board of Governors in 2022, noted in his Friday email to university presidents that, due to logistics involved in the regulatory process, it’s possible that universities may not be able to complete a review of targeted courses ahead of the Fall 2024 semester.

    He noted that the process of identifying courses for the review will require the Board of Governors to submit a data request to universities. “Therefore, even on campuses that identified that it may be feasible for a faculty committee to conduct a review, we won’t have the data available in time to move forward with a review before the Fall Semester begins,” he wrote. “The most important thing is that we get this right.”

    The plan is to have Rodrigues’ staff work with universities individually to identify courses that will require review, based on the targeted keywords, with a goal of completing a review before the end of the fall semester.

    He added that course materials flagged for “instances of antisemitism or anti-Israeli bias” should subsequently be reported to his office. “Thanks for your cooperation in this matter,” he shared, before signing off.

    This isn’t the first time the state university system has been directed to censor professors or course materials for content relating to divisive issues. Like in other Republican-controlled states, conservative state leaders have sought to crack down on the instruction of critical race theory,  gender identity and sexual orientation, and what elected officials like Gov. DeSantis call “woke indoctrination” in schools — a manufactured problem that has caused confusion and created an atmosphere of fear among public school teachers and faculty subjected to new rules imposed by the state.

    Dr. Talat Rahman, the incoming president of UCF’s faculty union, the United Faculty of Florida, was not immediately available for comment on the new state directives.

    If you’re a university student or faculty member who would like to share their thoughts on this, contact reporter McKenna Schueler: [email protected]

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    McKenna Schueler

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  • Pro-Palestine Students Speak Out Against Case Western Reserve University’s Encampment Punishments

    Pro-Palestine Students Speak Out Against Case Western Reserve University’s Encampment Punishments

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    Mark Oprea

    Task Force member and Case senior Yousef Khalaf spoke out against Case Western’s decision to ban certain pro-Palestine protestors, at the MLK branch of the Cleveland Public Library on Friday.

    This weekend, in a hall at Case Western Reserve University, some 2,700 undergraduates and graduates will don their black caps and tasseled gowns and walk across the graduation stage.

    And 53 might not, according to students. (That number is just three, according the school.)

    Earlier in the week, on Monday, several dozen students who were involved with the pro-Palestine encampment on the Kelvin Smith Library green were delivered emails from Case’s Office of Student Conduct effectively banning them from campus activity. And, most direly, from not receiving their diplomas as investigations from the office continue.

    As those punished students, deemed personas non grata by Case admins, pursue remedy through the university’s conduct process, a handful of them gathered on the second floor of the nearby MLK branch of the Cleveland Public Library to call out what they see as Case President Eric Kaler’s mishandling of what was a peaceful protest.

    The six present, members of the Palestine Task Force, spoke passionately about what Kaler, unlike more progressive university chiefs around the country, has not seemed to get.

    “Case Western has retaliated against their students for exercising their right to academic freedom and inflicted disproportionate punishment on their students,” Faten Odeh, the director of the Cleveland chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, told the crowd, “simply because they disagree with them that an ongoing genocide should not be paid and funded with their tuition”

    The Task Force, which worked with Students for Justice for Palestine members to erect a tent village in early May, has been placing increasing pressure on CWRU to both disclose and divest in any financial stakes in Israel-owned companies.

    Protesters at colleges around the world have used encampments and graffiti with varying levels of success. At Trinity College in Dublin, university admins agreed not to renew any investments with Israeli ties next March. And on Wednesday, the Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine encampment disbanded after failing to earn a divestment commitment from university admins.

    At Case, what protesters see as a communication breakdown between them and Kaler has led to, what students said on Friday, a misjudging of their original goal to spotlight war casualties. A 180 from what, Task Force members and Case senior Yousef Khalaf said, the college’s guiding mission.

    “They accepted us because they knew that we stand for these ideas,” he said. “They knew that we’re willing to fight for what we believe in, and we’re willing to pursue these different ideas and have dialogue and do revolutionary things.

    “And now we’re being punished for those same things.”

    click to enlarge Jad Oglesby, a senior and former head of Case's Students for Justice for Palestine, speaking on Friday with the five other Task Force affiliates. - Mark Oprea

    Mark Oprea

    Jad Oglesby, a senior and former head of Case’s Students for Justice for Palestine, speaking on Friday with the five other Task Force affiliates.

    Since February, Case Western officials have long maintained a sense of openness regarding freedom of expression on campus, and has categorized some of the protesters’ behavior—some Free Palestine chants, or “YOU CAN’T HIDE” painted on Eldred Hall—as “threatening” or “hateful.”

    It’s why, along with an encampment on Case property, 53 students received notices of interim suspension. Yet, according to a statement on Friday, Case’s Office of Student conduct has “moved expeditiously” to hurry those punished through the hearing process in time for graduation.

    As of Friday’s press conference, only 12 were in midst of the conduct procedure; and just three students, the university said, are to be banned from commencement. (I don’t know where they’re getting that number from,” law graduate Mike Grimm told press.)

    “All others have been permitted to take part in their degree-conferral ceremonies,” the statement read, “among other commencement-related activities. Decisions on the awarding of degrees will be made once the conduct process is complete.”

    But what about after graduation? Many of the anxieties expressed by Task Force affiliates dealt with issues extending past May—from securing a spot on a scheduled bar exam to starting internships or locking down hoped-for jobs.

    Several protesters, including Jad Oglesby, a Case senior and former SJP president, brought up a forest for the trees mentality, that history would see the encamped in a better light rather than being a burden. He reminded those present there was a reason that the encampment began around the 54th anniversary of the May 4th Kent State Shootings.

    “In the past, protesters have been labeled as radicals, as malefactors to society,” Oglesby said, wearing a black suit wrapped in a keffiyeh. “That’s how we were labeled during the Civil Rights movement. That’s how we were labeled during the Vietnam war. That’s how we were viewed during protesting South African apartheid.

    He added: “And that’s how we are being labeled today.”

    Mark Oprea

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  • What to know about the ASU professor who harassed a Muslim woman

    What to know about the ASU professor who harassed a Muslim woman

    This story was updated May 9 to include statements from Arizona State University and ASU President Michael Crow. Wearing a hijab and sunglasses, the woman keeps trying to walk away…

    TJ L’Heureux

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  • Nellie McKay’s “Columbia Is Bleeding” Has Taken On A New Meaning

    Nellie McKay’s “Columbia Is Bleeding” Has Taken On A New Meaning

    In 2006, when another U.S.-backed war was raging, Nellie McKay released her sophomore album, Pretty Little Head. Among the many gems on the record (including “The Big One,” “Swept Away” and “Lali Est Paresseux”) was “Columbia Is Bleeding.” No stranger to making political statements with her first album, Get Away From Me, McKay had already established her knack for acerbic lyrics on politically-tinged songs like “I Wanna Get Married,” “Inner Peace,” “Work Song” and “Respectable.” With such tongue-in-cheek ditties giving listeners an introduction to McKay’s biting wit, they were technically “primed” to receive a message like the one on “Columbia Is Bleeding.” And that message gave the eponymous school plenty to quake in its very expensive designer boots about. Though, based on the continued use of animals (particularly baboons) in laboratory testing at Columbia, maybe the institution wasn’t affected enough. 

    For those wondering why Columbia has laboratories where animals can be experimented on in the first place, perhaps they’re forgetting that the university is above all a research one (a trait that played heavily into its role in helping to create the atom bomb). And “research,” unfortunately, always seems to involve animals. Beings who, for whatever reason, still have to be advocated for in terms of making humans believe they should be protected under laws that recognize them as sentient creatures. Which, of course, they are. And yet, it has only been in recent years that more and more scientists are realizing that all manner of creatures previously ignored under this category (particularly insects) have a far more elevated consciousness than once acknowledged. So yes, McKay was (and probably still is) rightfully upset about the cruel and torturous ways that “lab animals” are treated at Columbia. The lid was blown off Columbia’s gross mistreatment of the animals (e.g., eyes being cut out of their heads while they were fully conscious) in their labs starting in 2002, when a veterinarian working onsite became a whistleblower after their repeated reports and complaints went ignored by the “higher powers” at the institution. The frequent and excruciating testing on these animals without so much as an analgesic or anesthetic was just the tip of the iceberg. And yes, blood was spilled over and over again in the name of “research.” 

    So it is that McKay sardonically sings, “Chris Hougan/She had to run/Last night been a lot of fun/But now it’s French/A little tense/She hadn’t done the reading/There she sat/Hoped to pass/Didn’t think to face the fact that/Oh by gosh/Alas alack/Columbia is bleeding.” Painting the picture of students going about their daily, often frivolous business as unbridled torture went on behind closed doors, McKay continues, “Walkin’ down/Off the bus/Vickie Lucas crossed campus/Was thinkin’ how/She’s made it now/That successful feelin’/Walked by fast/Hailed a cab/No clue that she’d passed a lab/And while she’s sittin’ in lit class/Columbia is bleeding.” In the eighteen years since “Columbia Is Bleeding” was released, the students are very much aware of the kind of bleeding that’s going on outside their walls and, now in recent weeks, inside them. Not just for the animals, but the humans being attacked by police in response to pro-Palestine demonstrations.

    The NYPD was summoned to the premises by the university itself, claiming that the students who had set up encampments in solidarity with Palestine were creating “a disruptive environment for everyone.” But the most disruptive environment of all was created by the NYPD’s presence as they cleared out the encampments and occupied buildings with the brute force they’re so “renowned” for. One officer even managed to let his gun go off in the process. Accident or not, bullets “grazing” students is nothing new in the university-based protest scene (though they did more than just graze the four students who were killed at Kent State by the National Guard, solely because they were protesting the injustices of the day: the government’s escalation of the Vietnam War and civil rights).

    In the late 60s, which the current situation is being compared to, Richard Nixon commented of the rise in protests on university campuses, “You see these bums, you know, blowing up the campuses. Listen, the boys that are on the college campuses today are the luckiest people in the world, going to the greatest universities, and here they are burning up the books, storming around this issue. You name it. Get rid of the war there will be another one.” Sadly, Nixon, “dick” or not, wasn’t wrong about that last assertion (mainly because the same types of warmongering people will always find themselves in power). But his out-of-touch statements are mirrored in one of the evergreen lines from McKay’s song that resonates more than ever. Namely, her sarcastic delivery of: “Everybody knows/Protestors are those/Schmoes who don’t have a life.” With such attitudes from their “elders” lobbied against them, it’s a wonder that anyone in attendance at universities and colleges feels compelled to protest at all—and yet, students, being young and energized as they are, serve as the lone population with far less to lose than any other when it comes to protesting. This, of course, isn’t to say they aren’t putting their own lives on the line when they take that risk. A risk that many of their parents would urge them against. Not just because they don’t want their children to get hurt, but because they’re paying “good money” for them to be there so they can “learn,” not rebel.  

    Good money that is doled out in addition to the already sizable endowment Columbia is known for. Indeed, as a private university with one of the largest endowments in the United States, Columbia has nonetheless remained hush-hush about where they get said endowments and what they’re funneled back into (in 1968, student protesters found that it was funneled right back into killing the Vietnamese via the Institute for Defense Analyses). Hence, the protesters’ additional call for the university to divest “from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine.” A cute thought, to be sure. But, in case anyone needs reminding, Columbia began as a colonial university—of course it’s going to support a fundamentally colonialist “cause”: the occupation of another, “inferior” country. In part thanks to being a “colony college,” historically, the students that attend it are from a largely privileged and, yes, largely white background. It’s the Ivy fucking League, after all. Diversity has never been its strong suit. Something that tracks in another verse from “Columbia Is Bleeding” that goes, “Didn’t think to face the fact/That while he’s thinking, ‘Man that’s wack’/Columbia is bleeding/Quite a snob/He didn’t tip/Nice guy Rob watched the eclipse/Then looked around, ‘I’ve made it now I’m just so glad to be here’/Made a pass/Got hand slapped/Didn’t think to face the fact/That while he’s mackin’ on that ass/Columbia is bleeding.”

    In the present, it would take a total lack of sentience to see that it’s not, and yet, there are many who would prefer to simply ignore all these “unpleasant scuffles” and return to the art of what it really means to be a student: getting drunk and high and sleeping in until the first afternoon class. And, of course, those in power would love, more than anyone, to see things magically “getting back to normal.” Which, in all likelihood, they probably will (even though nothing will ever truly be the same again). The revolution will not be televised, but steamrolled. 

    McKay concludes the song with the dry declaration, “This is the Ivy League/Columbia is bleeding…/Columbia is bleeding…” So, too, are many other universities in the U.S. right now, with the comparisons to the eruption of student protests in 1968 being the closest Gen Z has ever come to identifying in some way with baby boomers. The latter generation also believed that they were riding a “tidal wave that would just sweep over the world and cleanse it and make everything new” (which is kind of where Hitler was coming from, in his own skewed mind), as writer/former Columbia student James Kunen phrased it in an interview about his response to student protest history repeating. That was his take on how protesting felt in April 1968. In 2024, one wonders if it feels slightly less so. If it’s coming more from a place of being “fresh out of fucks” about trying to placate a genocidal government than it is “we can make the world anew.”

    While many remain hopeful about the results that these protests might eventually yield, one can’t help but think of a certain monologue from Alex Garland’s 2020 limited series, Devs. In it, the head of security for a sinister tech company called Amaya finds himself in the position of needing to torture someone who has gotten caught up in the dangerous situation at hand. As an ex-CIA operative, Kenton (Zach Grenier) tells that person, while giving him a moment to collect his breath after waterboarding him, “My problem is I have to contain a very complex situation, but the situation is refusing to be contained. In fact, it’s cascading…” Sounds a lot like the protests that are going on now. And yet, perhaps like the government, Kenton insists, “But I’m not panicking, I’ll tell you why.” The why, for him, is: “Long ago… a popular uprising had started on mainland China. The focus point was Beijing. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators had occupied Tiananmen Square. Wouldn’t fucking budge. And at a certain point, my bureau chief called us into his office and said China was finished. Whatever the government did wouldn’t make a difference; the protests would spread across the country, the system would collapse. The tipping point was reached, the cascade was unstoppable. You know what happened next? The Chinese government sent in soldiers and tanks to Tiananmen Square, shot everybody they could, took the revolution by the neck and crushed the fucking life out of it.”

    At the moment, that feels like the more probable result of these protests than any actual ceasefire, with blood, blood and still more blood spilling in universities across the U.S. as they try to make warmongers see reason. But you know what they say about trying to reason with crazy people: you can’t. 

    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Florida universities ramp up security for graduations as campus protests continue

    Florida universities ramp up security for graduations as campus protests continue

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    Photo by Mauricio Murillo

    Some Florida state universities have ramped up security and issued advisories for graduation ceremonies, amid an already heightened police presence on campuses because of a wave of student protests.

    Pro-Palestinian demonstrations stemming from the war between Israel and Hamas have led to the arrests of dozens of protesters on at least three Florida university campuses this week. With graduation ceremonies in the coming days or underway, some schools have reported increased security and signs detailing what is and isn’t allowed at commencement events.

    University system Chancellor Ray Rodrigues on Monday issued a memo to presidents of the 12 state universities, urging them to “protect the integrity of our commencement ceremonies and ensure the safety of our students.”

    “No commencement ceremony should be canceled, or substantively modified, as a result of unruly demonstrators. These ceremonies are important milestones for our graduating students, and we owe it to our students to see to it that these ceremonies take place as planned,” Rodrigues wrote.

    The chancellor, a Republican former state lawmaker, also authorized school presidents to “take any steps necessary to ensure the safety” of people attending commencement ceremonies.

    The University of South Florida has all of its normal security measures in place for this year’s ceremonies, which run Thursday through the weekend. Anyone who enters the campus Yuengling Center arena is subject to bag checks and metal-detector screenings.

    But extra security measures also are in place.

    “There is a heightened law enforcement presence on campus this week, including for our commencement ceremonies,” USF spokeswoman Althea Johnson said in an email.

    Rodrigues’ memo included a directive that university officials “promptly inform faculty, staff, students, and guests that protests, discrimination or harassment at commencement ceremonies will not be tolerated.”

    USF followed through.

    “All graduates have been reminded that the USF Student Code of Conduct remains in effect throughout the ceremonies and inappropriate behavior will not be tolerated. Anyone who disrupts, distracts or otherwise interferes with the ceremony will be subject to removal from the event,” Johnson said.

    Florida State University did not respond to questions from The News Service of Florida about whether security would be ramped up for commencement ceremonies Friday and Saturday, but the school published an advisory online about prohibited behavior.

    “For the comfort and respect of all attendees, disruptions to the proceedings will not be tolerated. This includes but is not limited to outbursts, excessive noise, heckling, the use of noisemakers or any behavior indicative of intoxication. Violators will be promptly escorted from the premises to maintain the solemnity of the occasion,” the advisory said.

    The FSU advisory also included a list of prohibited items that included flags and signs. The notice also said law-enforcement officials would have discretion to prohibit additional items.

    Pro-Palestinian protests have shaken campuses across the country as the academic year ends. President Joe Biden held a media briefing Thursday to address the demonstrations.

    “We’ve all seen images that put to the test two fundamental American principles. First is the right to free speech, and for people to peacefully assemble and make their voices heard. Second is the rule of law. Both must be upheld,” Biden said.

    The president also said protests should not get in the way of graduation ceremonies proceeding smoothly.

    “Violent protest is not protected, peaceful protest is. It’s against the law when violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest, it’s against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduation — none of this is a peaceful protest,” Biden said.

    Florida International University boosted security for its graduation ceremonies. FIU started holding ceremonies Sunday, with the events continuing through Thursday.

    “As part of the planning process and prior to the chancellor’s memorandum being issued, the FIU Police Department increased staffing levels at commencements and put plans in place to address potential protests. Fortunately, no disruptions have occurred,” Maydel Santana, a spokeswoman for the school, told the News Service.

    Florida Gulf Coast University, on a webpage including advisories for people who will attend commencement ceremonies over the weekend, has a general reminder that guests should “be respectful and courteous of others” and lists items such as signs that are prohibited.

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    Ryan Dailey, NSF

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