Amid crackdowns on student protests nationwide, UCSC sprouts a homegrown, peaceful pro-Palestine encampment

Colleges across the United States experienced a major escalation in tensions over the war in Gaza on Wednesday as police arrested pro-Palestinian demonstrators on campuses from Flagstaff, Arizona, to Manhattan. At UCLA, where pro-Israel counterprotesters attempted to tear down a pro-Palestine encampment, the two groups clashing for hours until police arrived; following this, the university canceled classes for the day. 

It was a jarring contrast to the civil scene at UC Santa Cruz, where hundreds of students and faculty marched in a dense yet orderly phalanx across campus and into Quarry Plaza, the glen at the center of the bucolic, woodsy campus. 

On the way, student organizers donning day-glo yellow vests guided marchers to prevent traffic snarls. Aside from a brief interruption as the long line of marchers crossed the street, buses and cars continued around campus unimpeded. Once at the plaza, students then erected two dozen tents in a section they had cordoned off with cones, rope and wood. 

No police, nor campus security of any kind, were to be seen. And outside of the thousands who moved into and out of the campus core to participate in or observe the protest, life went on as usual at UCSC. Indeed, compared to New York’s Morningside Heights or Los Angeles’ Westwood neighborhoods, the protest atmosphere in Santa Cruz was as pleasant as the weather was balmy.

So far, the reaction from the UCSC administration and the campus police has been muted. University spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason said school officials were watching the situation but had not canceled classes or other scheduled activities. He did not comment on whether administrators planned to involve police. 

The encampment itself was organized by the Santa Cruz chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) — the same group that was banned by Northern Arizona University administrators Wednesday in an attempt to quell protests there. The rally that preceded the construction of the camp included SJP, members of the graduate student union UAW 4811, Faculty for Justice in Palestine and the student group Jews Against White Supremacy. 

Within a few hours of the marchers arriving at Quarry Plaza, the encampment had begun to resemble a mini-city. A central tent structure was laden with food, water, fruit and vegetables. Students chalked art and protest slogans in the asphalt along the length of the encampment. A sea of keffiyehs and protest signs hung from the buildings overlooking the camp. Organizers ushered protesters and occupiers around and offered water, face masks and pizza to onlookers.

An undergraduate spokesperson for Students for Justice in Palestine named Layn, who preferred to remain mononymous for safety reasons, said that they expected 50 to 60 students to be camping in the quarry. The students who volunteered to camp out were committed, and would not be attending classes or work for the duration of the camp, Layn said.

While UC Santa Cruz doesn’t have a “central quad” on its campus like many universities — rather, the energy of student life is dispersed through 10 residential colleges clustered in pairs across the elevated campus — Quarry Plaza, home to the student union and a performance venue, is the de facto center of campus life. 

Formerly the site of a limestone quarry, the plaza is situated in a glen adjacent to the college-owned bookstore and a convenience store on one side, and the student union and Graduate Student Commons on the other side. Cafe Ivéta, one of three local family-owned cafes with the Ivéta brand, rents from the ground floor of the Graduate Student Commons; unlike the convenience store, Ivéta remained open all day despite the protest out front, and business even appeared brisk. 

Layn noted that SJP was calling for the University of California system to divest from military contractors who profit from “Palestinian death” and disclose its investments and research activities. 

The student group’s call for “divestment and disclosure” mimic those of dozens of other pro-Palestine groups across the country. Indeed, the phrase has become shorthand for the political demand that universities reveal their investments in corporations linked to Israel and/or helping to supply and fund its assault on Gaza.

Meanwhile, what protestors christened the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” grew and evolved throughout the evening. The boundaries expanded as the sun set, with protesters moving their rope cordon further out towards Cafe Ivéta. A teach-in ensued in the background, with poetry performances and speeches from lecturers and fellow students, one of whom described the space as a “liberated zone.” 

Despite the calm atmosphere at the well-organized protest and rally, it was not all business as usual at UC Santa Cruz. The local chapter of the graduate student union, which represents graduate student workers on campus, voted to hold a work stoppage for the entire day. Rebecca Gross, a Ph.D. student and the chair of UAW 4811, the union that represents graduate students and post-docs on campus, described the work stoppage as an act of solidarity with the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions — the equivalent of the U.S. AFL-CIO, she said. 

“They put out a call saying, ‘We’re demanding solidarity from workers all over the world on International Workers Day [May 1],” Gross said. Graduate students from “over 20 departments” across campus took the idea to their members and came back and voted on a “one-day work stoppage,” Gross added.

Hence, classes and discussion sections led by graduate workers were canceled across campus. Some professors didn’t hold classes, either: the group UC Faculty for Justice in Palestine (UC FJP) held a faculty walkout on May Day, too.

“We call for this action at a time when there are no universities left in Gaza,” the UC FJP media release read. 

The faculty behind the release explicitly decried the devastation of academia in Gaza. 

“We cannot in good faith engage in academic research while Israel commits what U.N. experts call ‘scholasticide,’ the systematic obliteration of the Palestinian education system,” they continued. “Over 5,800 Palestinian students and teachers have been killed, and a further 8,575 have been injured. 625,000 students have been left without any ability to study.” 

The emergence of UCSC’s Gaza solidarity encampment mirrors those on other campuses across the United States, including Cal Poly Humboldt, which recently made national headlines due to local police incursions and arrests of students. CBS News reports that nationwide over 1,000 students have been arrested at similar protests since April 18, when demonstrators were first arrested at Columbia University in New York. 

At other universities, from Columbia to the University of Texas in Austin to Emory University in Georgia, reports of police brutality and threats of expulsion have marred otherwise peaceful protests. 

However, many University of California campuses, including Berkeley and Santa Barbara, currently have similar Gaza war protests that have been peaceful and without a marked or violent reaction from administration or police. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Teresa Watanabe suggested that the UC’s “lighter touch” was “rooted in the legal requirement for public universities to honor the First Amendment.”

“The more permissive UC response has been shaped by decades of experience with high-profile protests and in particular the 2011 uproar at UC Davis, where campus police pepper-sprayed students who were peacefully protesting economic and social inequality during the Occupy movement,” Watanabe noted. 

As the sun set Wednesday, hundreds of students continued to talk and converse in and around the encampment. Ten more tents ringed the perimeter, and a dozen students sat painting protest signs as others got plates from the makeshift kitchen buffet. Quarry Plaza, typically sedate at night, had sprouted into a hub for student social life.

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