Pro-Palestinian Protesters No Longer Welcome Here

Cal State LA president is not happy after building takeover
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Jun 14, 2024 12:00 AM CDT
Pro-Palestinian Protesters No Longer Welcome Here
Pro-Palestinian student protesters barricade the entrance to the student services building while awaiting for their divestment demands of California State University, Los Angeles administration on the campus in Los Angeles on Wednesday, June 12, 2024.   (Keith Birmingham/The Orange County Register via AP)

The president of California State University, Los Angeles, said demonstrators protesting Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza are no longer welcome on campus after some of them occupied and trashed a building while she was inside, the AP reports. The takeover ended early Thursday without arrests, a school spokesperson said. Protesters barricaded the multistory Student Services Building at 4pm Wednesday with university President Berenecea Johnson Eanes and dozens of other employees inside, said spokesperson Erik Frost Hollins. Most of the 58 employees got out by 6pm except for a group of administrators who remained until after midnight to manage the situation. The group included Eanes, but Frost Hollins would not say whether the president interacted with the protesters.

Most of the protesters left the building around 1:15am Thursday and returned to an encampment on the campus. A few remaining protesters left when university police ordered them out, Frost Hollins said. In a statement Thursday afternoon to the school community, Eanes said she has engaged with protesters who have occupied the campus encampment for some 40 days. "So long as the encampment remained non-violent, I was committed that the university would continue to talk," the president wrote. But in the wake of destruction and theft that occurred Wednesday, a line was crossed and "those in the encampment must leave."

There were no arrests and no injuries were reported, but "assaults" were reported by three employees and one student, according to Eanes. Officials said those were a law enforcement matter. Images from the scene showed graffiti on the building, furniture blocking doorways and overturned golf carts, picnic tables and umbrellas barricading the plaza out front.

(More 2024 campus protests stories.)

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