I’m CalMatters larger schooling reporter Mikhail Zinshteynand I’m subbing for Lynn.
If a rule isn’t adopted within the forest and nobody was there to implement it, was it actually damaged?
That tortured metaphor, compliments of a school philosophy class I took 20 years in the past, is a central theme in my story in the present day with CalMatters colleague Matthew Reagan that examines the College of California’s efforts to reinforce guidelines in opposition to campus encampments.
The president of the vaunted public college system final month informed campus leaders to mainly implement their very own current guidelines — the identical ones that had been on the books at campuses together with UCLA and UC San Diego, the place pro-Palestinian encampments final spring attracted nationwide headlines, scores of arrests and violence. Most campuses had the foundations; these with out them ought to create them, the UC president mentioned.
Tents, graffiti, blocking of entryways to buildings and the opposite accouterments of final spring’s encampments had been usually in opposition to current college insurance policies. So why weren’t these guidelines enforced earlier than campus leaders at some UCs requested police to comb the camps?
UC spokesperson Stett Holbrook: “The uniform enforcement of any policy is always a challenge in a system as large and diverse as UC. We strive to strike the right balance between enforcement and flexibility to do what is in the interest of the communities we serve — especially when it relates to expressive activity.”
Why do you have to care? Although the overwhelming majority of scholars didn’t participate in protests or the encampments, the liberty to protest is within the First Modification of the U.S. Structuretogether with free speech and a free press. How campuses stability these rights and scholar security will at all times strike a nerve culturally and politically.
And we could be fairly certain protests will proceed. For so long as Israel and Hamas are at conflict, and the loss of life toll in Gaza continues to mount, college students can be stirred to decry the killings and search concrete calls for to finish the battle.
That college students protested final spring wasn’t new — they had been marching inside weeks of Israel’s navy response to the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel. As I reported final November after witnessing two protests on consecutive days — one staged by Jewish college students in help of Israel and one other by pro-Palestinian college students (who embody Jewish college students) — “this wasn’t a dialogue, but a thunderous expression of each side’s anguish.”
And that anguish will proceed. As college students observe the unfolding headlines within the Center East and stress the UC to divest from weapons producersothers are asking the courts to look backwards at how campuses dealt with the protests and encampments final college 12 months.
Most UC college students return for fall time period this month. Learn extra on the difficulty in in the present day’s story.
