Quick Take
Student activists at UC Santa Cruz say they're outraged about a student's arrest and concerned about free speech rights as they protest Israel's war in Gaza. An attorney for one of the students says she believes the university is retaliating against her for her activism.
As protests against Israel’s war in Gaza resumed at UC Santa Cruz, several incidents of campus police cracking down on student activism this month have many students at the university angry and on high alert.
On Oct. 1, lawyers claim police “illegally” seized a student-activist’s phone. On Monday, police arrested a student after she used a megaphone during a rally for Gaza in Quarry Plaza. The next day, police told graduate students that they would be arrested on charges of disturbing the peace if they were to use one.
An attorney for the student whose phone was seized, Rachel Lederman, senior counsel at the Center for Protest Law & Litigation, said she sees these incidents as examples of the university punishing students for their activism for Palestine.
“I think that college activism has been important in bringing about social change throughout history,” she said. “Universities can crack down and try to squelch students free speech, but I don’t think that they’re going to succeed in preventing young people from raising their voices against injustice, and we are going to do everything we can to make sure that the students can speak out on issues of concern to them.”
The ramped-up police enforcement actions come after the University of California’s message to its campuses at the start of this academic year calling for bans on encampments like the ones seen at UC Santa Cruz last spring, the blocking of pathways and masking that hides the identity of protesters. While these policies are in effect at all the campuses, Lederman and students say the recent enforcement at UC Santa Cruz seems out of the ordinary and unique in the UC system.
“Santa Cruz has been one of the most harsh in terms of all the arrests last year, conduct charges and everything,” said Lederman.
Rebecca Gross, chair of the graduate student union at UC Santa Cruz, told Lookout she’s been in touch with her union’s statewide leadership about the undergraduate’s arrest as well as her own interaction with an officer at the Gaza rally on Tuesday – when she was told she and others could be arrested for using a megaphone.
“I haven’t heard of this happening at other campuses this week,” she said. “So as far as I know, this is the highest level of repression that we’re seeing across the state.”
Fourth-year student Nicolas Robles, vice president of student life for the undergraduate student government, told Lookout that seeing the university take these recent actions has been “disheartening.”
“It just makes me angry at the university for not even caring about the students one bit,” he said. “They used excessive force on a single student in a free speech zone, in the Quarry Plaza.”
Lookout asked campus spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason and Police Chief Kevin Domby why the police approached the student, and why police enforcement was necessary with her, as she was one of several students who used a megaphone and one of many who was wearing a mask. Domby didn’t return requests for comment.
“Campus safety officers Monday afternoon approached an individual who was engaged in conduct in violation of University policy,” Hernandez-Jason wrote via email. “The individual refused to identify themselves to officers and attempted to leave. As officers sought to detain the person, the individual resisted and physically assaulted officers. The individual was arrested and taken to the county jail.”
He referenced the university’s “time, place and manner” conduct policies, which lay out restrictions on conduct, including when people can participate in “expressive activities.”
Hernandez-Jason did not respond to repeated requests to clarify the specific citations police gave the student, but wrote that the “police investigation is on-going and charges are expected to be filed next week.”
He also didn’t respond to questions regarding the behavior that allegedly violated university policy, at what point and why police involvement was necessary and if there was any attempt for education rather than enforcement during what was reported to be a rally without any public safety incidents.
Lookout has filed a records request for the officers’ body camera footage during the arrest.
UC Santa Cruz Graduate student rally over Gaza protests
On Tuesday, the day after the arrest, Gross said she and about 50 other graduate students gathered to hold a rally to criticize administrators for calling police to raid the Palestine solidarity encampment in the spring as well as the university’s notices of intent to dismiss four graduate students for their participation in the spring strike.
They were about to begin their rally in Quarry Plaza, setting up with a speaker and microphone, when she said Dean of Students Garrett Naiman told her that they could be in violation of student misconduct policies if they used the microphone.
Gross said that while she was relaying the message to the group of graduate students, UCSC Police Lt. Greg Flippo approached them.
“[He] came up to us while we were having our little sidebar meeting, and threatened us with arrest. He also notified us of the time, place, manner restrictions. I said, ‘Well, I was just told by the administrators that this would only be a student conduct violation and not a violation of any law,” she recalled. “And he said, ‘No, it would be a violation of Penal Code 415’ [disturbing the peace].”
Gross said as she was talking to the officer, Naiman returned. He and Flippo then walked away from the students. Despite those interactions, Gross said graduate students went on with their rally and used the megaphone without any other interactions or enforcement.
“I feel very well protected – [while] engaging in free speech – by the union,” she said. “I was at the point where I felt like, if they were going to try to arrest me or slap me with student conduct charges for just talking in a public part of campus, I was going to let them try.”
The “illegal” seizure of Gaza protester’s phone
Lederman, the attorney for the student who had her phone seized, is part of a team of attorneys representing her, one additional student and a UC Santa Cruz professor in a lawsuit filed last month against the university over bans from campus they were issued following their arrests during Gaza protests last spring.
“Since there are definitely attorney-client communications related to our lawsuit that are on the phone and we are suing the police chief as well as the UCSC administration in the lawsuit, we don’t think they should be entitled to look at that stuff,” she said.
Lederman said her client, Laaila Irshad, is one of three students who have seen their phones seized by police this year so far. She said the two other students saw their phones seized in June, but she doesn’t have the details about those cases.
Lederman said she filed a motion Friday, as part of that lawsuit, to ask the court to void the search warrant for the phone, to unseal the warrant because most of it is under seal, and for the police to destroy the content that they’ve obtained from the phone.
“All we know is that they state this search relates to some kind of a vandalism incident, but we don’t know anything more about that,” she said. “And the thing is that the search warrant is just incredibly broad in scope. There’s no time limitation. It’s anything from whenever she first acquired the phone to the present, and basically it entitles them to look at every single thing on her cell phone.”
Lederman said that the judge “shouldn’t have signed the warrant” because it doesn’t have a time limitation and doesn’t specify what the police could take from it.
She said Irshad hasn’t been cited or charged with anything related to vandalism. She was one of the students arrested May 31 when UCSC broke up the Gaza protest encampment on campus and received a citation for failure to disperse, but the district attorney’s office has not yet filed formal charges.
“We really think that this is an act of retaliation against her,” said Lederman. “(A) for being a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the university for their illegal banning of students and faculty from campus and/or (B) retaliating against her for activism against the war on Gaza.”
Lederman said a judge could decide on the motion at a hearing on Dec. 19 in that lawsuit.
Lookout asked UCSC Chancellor Cynthia Larive, Campus Provost Lori Kletzer and police chief Domby about the phone seizures, the Monday arrest and the Tuesday rally but did not immediately receive any responses.
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