Quick Take
UC Santa Cruz's Students for Justice in Palestine chapter says the group started negotiations with administrators over their list of demands, one week after they set up an encampment on campus. Students say they won't leave the Quarry Plaza camp until their demands are met.
UC Santa Cruz administrators and organizers of a week-old encampment in support of Palestine confirmed that they have started negotiations over a set of demands protesters want fulfilled before they will dismantle their camp, but students say the two sides are not close to reaching an agreement.
During a Wednesday rally, student organizers of the encampment said they started negotiations with UCSC administrators the day prior and received their first offer in response to their demands, which they rejected.
Students declined to share details about what the university offered, saying they wanted to maintain “good faith” negotiations. In a statement, the student organizers said UCSC administrators “attempted to water down our demands” and that protesters would “continue to fight until divestment.” They added that Chancellor Cynthia Larive “dropped out of the meeting at the last minute.”
Set up by the UCSC Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, encampment organizers posted a list of demands last week, including that the University of California divest from weapons-manufacturing companies and that the UC call for a cease-fire in Gaza. They said they wouldn’t leave camp until their demands were met.
Campus spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason confirmed that negotiations with students had started but didn’t respond to questions about details of the offer made by university officials, or if campus police would at some point be called to clear the camp, as has happened at other colleges and universities across the state and the country in recent weeks.
“The campus has entered into dialogue with the students to explore how we can amicably resolve this situation,” he wrote in an email.
Hernandez-Jason repeated the university’s goal to protect students. “The continued safety and well-being of our students and employees remains our highest priority,” he wrote. “We are continuing to support free expression while also allowing our teaching and research mission to continue unabated.”
The student campers are also calling on the university to cut ties with organizations like the Jewish campus organization Hillel International. In a statement Sunday, Larive said UCSC will continue to partner with Hillel: “Hillel has long been an important part of our campus’s interfaith council and we value and intend to continue this relationship.”
The UCSC negotiations come after several universities, including Northwestern, Brown and most recently Sacramento State, announced agreements with campus protesters. Sacramento State is the first public university in California to change its investment policy to meet the calls from students protesting for Palestine, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Members of the UCSC chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine told Lookout they’ll continue to have daily meetings with university administrators in the hopes of reaching a deal. They also said they don’t expect UCSC police to raid the camp in the meantime.
They’re not the only group taking actions supporting Palestine and demanding divestment from UC administrators.
The union representing graduate student researchers and academic postdocs on all UC campuses, UAW 4811, announced a strike authorization vote Monday through Wednesday after filing unfair labor practices charges “in response to UC’s actions against peaceful protesters” – a reference to police raids and arrests at UC San Diego and UCLA.
“It is important for Academic Employees to vote YES in the strike authorization vote to show [the] UC Administration that this unprecedented crackdown on free speech on University campuses is unacceptable,” the union statement reads.
UCSC graduate student workers wrote on X, formerly Twitter, about the upcoming vote’s significance. “A strike for Palestine, its resistance and its martyrs, and for the dignity of students and workers fighting for it, is now on the table at the UC,” they wrote. “We must not fail to meet the task at hand.”
Students first set up tents in the center of campus a week ago, on May 1. By Wednesday evening at the encampment, there were still about 80 tents in Quarry Plaza. Several were relocated after the campus fire marshal told students their location near a Quarry Amphitheater staircase was a fire hazard.
Shortly before a planned rally, students shuffled tents around and set up a stage near the Quarry Plaza parking lot. The “All eyes on Rafah rally” was organized by the campers to raise awareness of the Israeli government’s invasion of Rafah – a city in southern Gaza where more than 1 million Palestinians are sheltering from the war that has killed more than 34,000 civilians.
The organizers invited a surprise guest, rapper redveil, to perform during the rally after the concert he was scheduled to participate in on Friday at the amphitheater was canceled.
The student group that organized the concert at the amphitheater, Slug Life Productions Board, announced on Instagram that the board “heavy heartedly” canceled the event.
“We understand the disappointment you may be feeling, but the safety and well-being of our students and employees is our highest priority,” they wrote. “Based on current events on campus and their proximity to the Quarry Amphitheater, we do not believe that the venue could implement the logistics required to produce the concert effectively and safely.”
Instead, redveil performed several songs for about 200 students Wednesday evening in Quarry Plaza, adjacent to the encampment. He told student protesters he supported them and that he was proud of their advocacy.
“Thanks y’all for staying focused,” he said. “What y’all are doing is very, very important.”
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