We’ve seen arrests at Columbia and NYU, not it sounds as if student protesters at Stanford could be next. As with the arrests on other campuses, the issue here is tents. There is an area on campus designated for protests but it is open daily from 8 am to 8 pm. By pitching tents and camping out overnight, students are violating school policy.
In addition, this weekend is something called “admit weekend” which is designed to let admitted students (and their parents) visit the school to help them decide if they want to attend. The protest is area is not open during “admit weekend” which is apparently why the protesters issued a call to “take back admit weekend.”
URGENT ACTION: After 200 days of unrelenting genocide and as admit weekend arrives, we need the Stanford community to SHOW OUT on April 25 at 3:30 PM at Main Quad in order to demonstrate to admits that the idyllic image that Stanford administration wants to put forth is NOT the case. We do not stand for their complicity and repression. We demand that the university addresses their collaboration with apartheid and divest. There will be no business as usual this admit weekend ‼️‼️
Here’s the Instagram post:
The effort to establish a new tent camp started yesterday.
A group of Stanford students took over White Memorial Plaza Thursday evening to erect a “People’s University for Palestine” encampment, similar to other demonstrations seen at U.S. universities over the past week to protest Israel’s attacks on Gaza…
The protest, which involved hundreds of students throughout the day and at least 10 tents overnight, according to a student on campus, came as the university held its “admit weekend,” when Stanford welcomes hundreds of admitted students who are considering enrolling next fall. The protesters planned a full day of programming, including teach-ins, at White Plaza on Friday, according to social media posts.
Today, the school’s president made it clear that it plans to enforce the campus rules and failure to abide by those rules could lead to arrest.
Pro-Palestine students who established an encampment at White Plaza may face disciplinary action and possibly arrest, according to a Friday email from President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez. Protestors violated University policies against overnight camping in White Plaza’s free speech zone.
“In the OCS [Office of Community Standards] process, the violations that have been occurring may be punishable by sanctions up to and including suspension,” Saller and Martinez wrote. “The submission of student names to the OCS process has begun.”
Stanford has already been through this one before. In February, the president and provost held negotiations with a protest camp that had been in place for four months. The protesters agreed to remove their tents in exchange for agreeing to some of their demands.
Following two negotiation meetings on Feb. 14 and 16, sit-in organizers told The Daily that President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez agreed to “deliberate about coordinating with Palestinian students to release a statement about their experiences over the past four months.”
According to organizers, Saller agreed to raise concerns around investments to the Board of Trustees, specifically investment transparency, divestment from weapons manufacturers and military contractors and student representation on the Special Committee on Investment Responsibility.
No one was punished. Now it appears all of the attention given to Columbia and other schools for similar “liberation zones” has brought the protesters back. It remains to be seen if the administration will follow through on enforcement of the camping ban or if they will cave in and let the protesters run the campus as they see fit.