Students nationwide face harsh repression from university administrators and the police, but they’re not backing down.
Students nationwide face harsh repression from university administrators and the police, but they’re not backing down.
At the University of Florida encampment for Gaza, student protesters are forcing themselves to keep their eyes open night after night, fearing that if they doze off, they could be arrested.
“We are not allowed to sleep,” University of Florida freshman Cameron Driggers told Truthout having spent multiple nights at the encampment. “We’ve literally had folks, at least a dozen each night, camping out there, just sitting there throughout the night to maintain the encampment.”
Protesters are forbidden from sleeping or having pillows, tents or sleeping bags, according to a University of Florida memo. Signs must be held at all times. While some of the rules are open to interpretation — such as the prohibition against “disruption” — the punishment for disobeying any of the rules is quite clear: Students face the risk of being suspended and banned from campus for three years. Employees will be fired. (Although Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation in March criminalizing sleeping or camping on public property, it has not yet gone into effect.)
“We are under constant surveillance by the police,” said Driggers. “The police will be like, ‘Oh, that looks like you’re sleeping, you know the consequences for that.’”
On Sunday night, Driggers texted Truthout a video of police officers removing chairs that he said protesters had set out for demonstrators with disabilities. The next day, law enforcement arrested nine protesters, six of whom were students. The protesters were charged with a variety of offenses, including wearing a mask or hood in public, according to news reports.
When approached for comment by Truthout, a University of Florida spokesperson provided a statement stating that those arrested “knew the rules, they broke the rules, and they’ll face the consequences.”
And those consequences are severe, especially for low-income students. They risk arrest, suspension and eviction, and more. The six arrested students, for instance, have been banned from all University of Florida properties, according to the university.
Repressive crackdowns on student protesters are happening across the United States, not just in Republican-led states like Florida but also in “blue states” like New York and California.
According to a new Associated Press tally released today, more than 2,000 people at 36 different schools have now been arrested nationwide since April 18 in conjunction with college and university-based protests against Israel’s war on Gaza.
At the City College of New York, where thousands of students experience food insecurity, administrators closed the school’s food pantry, blaming the student protests. On Tuesday night, police stormed City College and Columbia University, and arrested hundreds of students.
