Twenty-one protesters were arrested and taken to Collin County jail on Wednesday afternoon after erecting a pro-Palestinian encampment at UT Dallas’ Chess Plaza. The students referred to the site as the Gaza Liberation Plaza. Police broke up the protest around 4:30 p.m., 12 hours after it formed.
The arrested protesters were held at the jail overnight on charges of criminal trespass, inspiring a second, larger wave of protesters to surround the jail and chant for their releases throughout the night. The majority of those arrested are UTD students, lawyers told CBSNews.
Mousa Najjar, president of the UTD chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, is one of the detainees. Three faculty members, Associate History Professor Ben Wright, Assistant History Professor Rosemary Admiral and Assistant Art History Professor Ali Asgar Alibhai, all remained booked in Collin County jail as of Thursday morning.
Noor Saleh, a third-year UTD student associated with SJP, said multiple administrators had told the group to stop their protest within its first few hours. Saleh said threats of expulsion, police and state troopers were mentioned by administrators.
“This is our way of keeping the conversation about Palestine and Gaza and confronting UTD,” Saleh said. “You cannot just turn off your phone screen and turn a blind eye.”
On Wednesday morning, the encampment included around 10 tents blocked off by a ring of pallets, tires and signs. Around 100 students, UTD alumni and supporters were inside. Students inside the encampment worked on homework, designed signs in support of Palestine and led chants calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and university divestment in weapons manufacturers.
Organizers of the protest received a letter from the administration later in the afternoon that said campus protests were not allowed to have “tents or structures” and participants could face trespassing charges and school sanctions if they continued. State police officers in riot gear then approached the encampment, where they made arrests and dismantled the structure.
“You cannot just turn off your phone screen and turn a blind eye.” — Noor Saleh, UTD student and SJP member
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Kevin Eltife, chairman of the University of Texas system’s Board of Regents, said in a statement April 30 that any “attempt to shut down or disrupt” a UT campus's operations would be met with police action.
“We will continue to call upon DPS to secure our campuses when needed,” Eltife said. “Moreover, we will make every effort to see that students who violate campus policies and outside individuals and groups that violate state law are fully prosecuted.”
Before the arrests began, Saleh said the number of pro-Palestinian protesters arrested on college campuses nationwide did not seem to dissuade people from joining UTD’s encampment. Just hours before UTD’s encampment was built, nearly 300 Columbia and City College students were arrested by New York police for similar protests. Police presence at schools like Columbia and the University of Texas have been "radicalizing" for students on other campuses, she said.
"The repression that we see at Columbia is proof that we have become a danger to our institutions," Saleh said. "The more [they] try to silence us the more we prove our voices are being heard."
'Ratcheting Tensions'
Phil Paolina, a professor of political science at the University of North Texas, agrees that heavy police presence at some protests has "encouraged" students to join the movement "when they wouldn't have otherwise."
"When you feel illegitimate action has been taken against you or someone you identify with, it just strengthens your resolve," Paolino said. "It's sort of what you've also seen at some of the universities where faculty are coming out in support of the protesters, not necessarily because they agree with the specific stance of the protesters but because they agree with the protesters having the right to be there and not be removed by the police."
Those who identify as a member of a historically oppressed group — such as Black or LGBTQ+ students — are likely to be increasingly sympathetic to the pro-Palestinian protests as police action ramps up, Paolino said. At UT Dallas, a group of protesters mobilized following the encampment raid and gathered at the university’s student union. The crowd that protested in the union and the crowd that surrounded the Collin County Jail were significantly larger than the encampment itself.
Twenty-one people arrested at UT-Dallas during the encampment must stay in the Collin County jail overnight. A magistrate refuses to see them until tomorrow morning, according to Pro-Palestinian attorneys. The arrested are mostly students and some faculty members. @CBSNewsTexas pic.twitter.com/47bQ4ITd0O
— Marvin Hurst (@MHurstMedia1) May 2, 2024
UT Dallas closed the student union several hours early Wednesday night, breaking up the protest, although administrators recognized the second protest as aligning with campus protest policy.
"UT Dallas requested assistance from outside law enforcement in an effort to ensure the safety of our students, faculty and staff. Individuals may peacefully assemble in the common outdoor areas of campus to exercise their right to free speech, but they may not construct an encampment or block pathways," UTD said in a statement.
Many schools that have authorized police action against protesting students, such as Columbia, UT and Tulane, have said that the protests were broken up because they were "disruptive" to campus life during finals season. One UTD student, who asked not to be named, said universities are "missing the point" of the protests entirely.
"Genocide is disruptive. The students in Gaza don’t have any universities, their entire educations have been halted," she said. "So how can I sit here in America, safe in my university, and complain about these protests being disruptive?"
"How can I sit here in America, safe in my university, and complain about these protests being disruptive?" — UTD student
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The student said she has family members living in Palestine and was visiting the encampment between classes.
The "ratcheted tensions" between protesters and universities could be due to factors similar to those seen at college campus protests during the Vietnam War, Paolino said. In the case of Vietnam, newspaper and television imagery of the impact of warfare on the Vietnamese people radicalized some students towards the movement. Today, social media imagery of Palestine is having a similar effect. In both instances, there was also a strong "interpersonal" divide between students in favor of the movement and those against it, Paolino said.
How We Got Here
The group organizing the encampment, Students for Justice in Palestine, is the same group that led last week’s sit-in in the hallway leading to UTD President Richard Benson’s office. The organization has chapters at universities across the country. Protesters Wednesday voiced their support for other chapters of the group, chanting “from Columbia to UTD, we are all SJP” and “from NYU to UTD, we are all SJP.”
SJP’s UTD chapter is asking the university to divest its shares in the University of Texas Investment Management Company, or UTIMCO, which manages the endowment funds of the UT system and is invested in the companies Raytheon Technologies, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics.
"Israel is the Jews’ homeland. It’s necessary, its existence is necessary, it’s vital." — Nathaniel Butterfield, Jewish UTD student
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The sit-in ended after Benson agreed to meet with student representatives of SJP, but the meeting was called off this week when a Pro-Israel student group was also invited to the conversation. Students told UTD's student newspaper, The Mercury, they "rejected" Benson's "two-sided" approach to the issue.
As arrests began Wednesday afternoon, a small group of counter-protesters stood near the encampment holding Israeli flags.
"I saw the protests, I saw they were chanting ‘Israel go to hell,’ ‘From the river to the sea’ … Israel is the Jews’ homeland. It’s necessary, its existence is necessary, it’s vital," Jewish student Nathaniel Butterfield told WFAA after joining the counter-protest.
