Quick Take
People arrested at the UC Santa Cruz Gaza solidarity encampment in May say they received a letter from university police about their charges. Two UCSC community members tell Lookout they believe the university is trying to discourage activism on campus.
UC Santa Cruz has started sending letters to some protesters arrested in May at the Gaza solidarity encampment warning that police have a year to pursue charges against them, a move some protesters see as an attempt to discourage further activism on campus as the academic year is set to begin in a few weeks.
Officers arrested 122 people as part of campus protests on May 31 – charging all of them with failure to disperse, and several with additional charges such as resisting arrest. However, many of those arrested remain in limbo, still awaiting arraignment dates to formally hear the charges against them.
Arraignments were first scheduled for July, and then postponed until September because UCSC police had not yet sent their arrest reports to the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office. Last week, the district attorney’s office said it still hasn’t received any reports and that it expected arraignments to be further delayed.
In a letter dated Aug. 8 and provided to Lookout, UC Santa Cruz Police Chief Kevin Domby wrote that police believed a protester had ignored dispersal orders and obstructed officers’ duties.
“Please be aware that the statute of limitations for submitting charges related to your arrest to the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office extends up to one year from the date of your arrest,” he wrote. “The decision to pursue charges against you will rest with UCSC PD and will be influenced by any future unlawful conduct.”
UCSC spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason confirmed that Domby had sent letters to protesters. However, he didn’t respond to several questions from Lookout, including why UCSC sent the letters, how many protesters are receiving them, when police would send arrest reports to the district attorney’s office and whether the police plan to send them at all.
“We have been providing updates to those involved when there is more information to share,” he wrote. “It’s not our practice to publicly share details about ongoing police investigations.”
Max Sárosi, a fourth-year senior studying agroecology and critical race and ethnic studies, received a letter.
“They’re basically holding people’s charges above them for the whole next year,” he said. “I think it’s just part of this new rollout of policies that criminalizes protests – bans on masking while protesting, and encampments. It’s a very clever, but also very pernicious strategy on the part of [UCSC police] because they understand that pressing charges against over 120 students for protesting would have created a total chaotic [public relations] disaster for UCSC.”
Still, he said he and many other protesters are determined to continue protesting and pushing their demands for divestment. “I think everyone’s ready to continue protesting the university’s complicity in Israel’s denial of Palestinians’ human rights,” he said. “I don’t think that’s going to change.”
Marisol LeBrón, an associate professor in feminist studies and critical race and ethnic studies, was also among those arrested in May.
She still has not received any updates regarding her charges. She was given an arraignment date of Sept. 23 – three days before instruction is set to begin for the fall quarter – and still plans to go to court that day until she gets notified of any changes.
LeBrón said she didn’t receive one of the letters from Domby, but she is disappointed by them.
“It seems like the admin are using the specter of these charges in play to try and force compliance with all of these new anti-protest policies,” she said. “I think they are hoping that people will not organize actions for the start of the school year with these charges still pending but I think that’s a major miscalculation that is going to backfire and cause enormous disruptions to our community.”
Throughout the spring, when protesters at campuses across the country staged demonstrations and set up encampments, they were met with police responses similar to the one at UC Santa Cruz. More than 3,000 protesters were arrested at campuses this past year and in many cases, charges have since been dropped, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
University leaders have been drafting policies and plans to curb protests once school resumes this fall. Earlier this month, University of California system president Michael Drake directed UC chancellors to enforce and clarify policies for protest activities, including a ban on encampments and prohibiting masking to conceal identity.
LeBrón said UCSC, and the UC systemwide, stand out as being among the higher-education institutions that haven’t dropped charges against protesters.
“I can’t help but notice the hypocrisy of a UC administration that touts the long and storied history of radical activism at the UC,” she said, “like the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley or the struggle for ethnic studies across the system, but then tries to squash students who put their critical thinking skills to work to oppose university complicity with genocide. At UCSC, this is especially true given how much the school tries to align itself with progressive and radical social history.”
She added that the actions against protesters aren’t so surprising after the “retaliation” against graduate student workers who went on strike at the end of the academic year.
UCSC graduate student worker and labor union organizer Rebecca Gross, in an opinion piece published in Lookout, said “administration is retaliating quietly by garnishing workers’ paychecks, attempting to fire workers without just cause and denying qualified workers future employment for striking.”
Gross said four workers received notices of the university’s intent to dismiss them on Aug. 5.
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