Campus Protests Escalate as Students Set up Encampment at Royce Quad
By Dolores Quintana
Early on Thursday, April 25, the University of California Los Angeles’s Students for Justice in Palestine established a Palestine Solidarity Encampment in Royce Quad. This came after the LAPD had forcefully dispersed a similar encampment at USC the day before, resulting in the arrest of 93 students and others. The same day,108 people were arrested at Emerson College in Boston, and another 50 were arrested at the University of Texas at Austin.
So far, 37 colleges all over the United States have set up protest encampments or “liberated zones”; 12 colleges have had arrests and had the encampments taken down; others are still standing.
According to a media representative of the encampment, the LAFD fire marshal counted 300 people in Royce Quad at 11:00 a.m.; the number had likely risen later in the day. Helicopters were flying over the Quad for most of the day and had been since 7:00 a.m. Reportedly, a meeting of the UCLA Regents was called. Repeated phone calls to the UCLA Media Center were not answered.
The demands of the student group can be read on their Instagram page here.
The demonstration was peaceful until counterprotesters attempted to sneak into the camp. Once they were discovered, a group of students who were part of the camp’s security detail asked the counterprotesters to leave. They attempted to de-escalate the situation and firmly insisted that the counterprotesters leave by walking forward as a group.
The counterprotesters were removed from the camp, and the rest of the group of counterprotesters began to taunt the students and yell at anyone nearby to “not touch them” or face physical violence. Later on, another counterprotester who entered the camp shoved a female encampment member to the ground.
As of tonight, no move has been made to clear the encampment by UCLA or the local police.
KCRW’s Good Food PieFest, an annual celebration of the popular dessert, was to be held on Sunday, April 28, in Royce Quad but was canceled around 3:00 p.m. with an email that read, “KCRW has decided to cancel this Sunday’s Good Food PieFest. We are aware of the campus protests at UCLA and believe it’s in the best interest for all to cancel.
PieFest is a beloved KCRW community event. As such, we will be looking into a possible reschedule and share the details as soon as we can.”