25 Pro-Palestinian demonstrators arrested after U-Va. calls in Virginia police

July 23, 2024

Authorities arrested 25 pro-Palestinian demonstrators during a sustained confrontation at the University of Virginia on Saturday, university officials said, after dozens of law enforcement officers in riot gear surrounded a student encampment and used pepper spray to disperse people from the area.

The clash, which U-Va. President James E. Ryan described in a letter to the school community Saturday evening as “upsetting, frightening and sad,” marked the latest escalation during the past several weeks of protests on campuses over the Israel-Gaza war. In a separate statement, the university said that it was still waiting for confirmation on how many of the 25 arrested were affiliated with U-Va.

More than 2,300 people have been arrested on campuses nationwide over the past two weeks, according to a Washington Post tally of news reports and police and university statements.

Demonstrators at the university in Charlottesville began their protest on a lawn outside the school chapel on Tuesday, joined by faculty and members of the community. After tents were erected Friday night in rainy weather, law enforcement officers arrived Saturday in increasing numbers, according to demonstrators at the encampment.

By Saturday afternoon, police with riot shields and headgear began to clear the encampment, pushing students to the ground and pulling them by their arms. Police used zip-ties and pepper spray, causing protesters to flee while clutching their eyes. A spokesperson for the Virginia State Police said only pepper spray was used, not tear gas, as some social media posts suggested.

“Our concern since this began has been the safety of our students. Students are not safe right now,” said Laura Goldblatt, an assistant professor of English and global studies who has been helping student demonstrators and witnessed Saturday’s arrests.

Students and faculty said that the encampment had been a modest, peaceful protest where a few dozen students had been preparing for exams, sharing food and holding vigils.

The question of the school’s policy on tent use helped set off the conflict on Saturday.

A public document on U-Va.’s website outlining guidance on the school’s health and fire safety regulations appeared to originally state that all tents required a preapproved permit — with an exemption for “recreational tents,” a category that could have included the use of tents at the protest. By Saturday morning, mention of the exemption was removed from the document.

At the encampment site Saturday morning, the head of the university police department Tim Longo approached demonstrators with a bullhorn to tell them to take down their tents. “You are free to stay on the site, but the tents must come down,” he said, according to a video posted on X by an editor at the student newspaper, the Cavalier Daily.

“It’s raining,” students could be heard responding.

In his letter to the school community, the university president, Ryan, said that the school had a “long-standing prohibition on erecting tents absent a permit.” Ryan said that when Longo approached the students, “pleading for a peaceful resolution,” the request was met with “physical confrontation.” At that point, the school felt it necessary to call Virginia State Police, he wrote in his letter, calling the ensuing clash “an aberration.”

The university’s Department of Safety and Security declared the area an “unlawful assembly” in an emergency alert Saturday afternoon and soon after, law enforcement began making arrests for trespassing.

A spokesperson for Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), Christian Martinez, said the governor’s office has been in daily contact with both law enforcement and the state’s colleges and universities.

Asked about the presence of law enforcement at U-Va., Martinez directed The Post to recent comments Youngkin made to Bloomberg TV, saying the state would support peaceful protests and the right to free speech, but “would not allow encampments and tents” or “violence and disruption and threats.”

At other campuses, some demonstrators disrupted commencement ceremonies, though protests at graduation events have been largely peaceful. Universities have been taking extra precautions as they grapple with balancing students’ free speech rights and maintaining an amicable atmosphere as thousands of graduating students and their families celebrate on campus.

For instance, University of Vermont President Suresh Garimella announced Friday that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield will no longer deliver the commencement address.

Roughly 75 student protesters marched through the University of Michigan’s commencement ceremony held at Michigan Stadium on Saturday. The university’s public affairs office said in a statement to The Post that the group began protesting at the start of the program and walked up the main aisle as they chanted. Public safety personnel moved them toward the back of the stadium, where they remained free to protest throughout the program. No arrests were made.

Pro-Palestinian protesters walked through the University of Michigan's spring commencement ceremony in Ann Arbor on May 4, after a night of protests on campus. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: Nic Antaya/Getty Images/The Washington Post)

Denver Police Chief Ron Thomas said Friday that he declined a request from campus officials to clear demonstrators a second time from the Auraria Higher Education Center, home to the University of Colorado at Denver, Community College of Denver and the Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Last week, law enforcement arrested about 40 protesters at the encampment on Auraria’s campus. “While I think the school would prefer that the group leave the area, I just don’t think that there is any legal way to do that,” Thomas said at a public board meeting Friday.

On Friday, New York police began clearing encampments at New York University and the New School and took more than 50 demonstrators into custody. More than 130 people were also arrested at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

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