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.
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