Late last night the New York Police Department conducted sweeps of encampments set up by pro-Palestinian protestors set up on the campuses of Columbia University and the City College of New York.
In recent weeks, students on campuses across the nation have been protesting university investment in companies which manufacture weapons used in the ongoing Israeli military actions in Gaza. Increasingly within the last 24 hours, police have resorted to violence against student protestors and in the process silenced student media with threats of arrest — these events are reprehensible and deeply alarming to the staff of the Loyola Phoenix.
Late last night the New York Police Department conducted sweeps of encampments set up by pro-Palestinian protestors set up on the campuses of Columbia University and the City College of New York. 300 students were arrested in New York City April 30, adding to the total of 1,600 student protestors which have now been arrested at 30 institutions across the country, according to a count kept by The Washington Post.
Student reporters served as a vital source of information on Columbia’s campus during the raid after the NYPD shut the campus off to professional outlets. While covering the clearing of the encampment, WKCR — Columbia’s student-run radio station — reported NYPD personnel had threatened student journalists that if they left Pulitzer Hall to cover the events occurring on the ground they would be arrested.
WKCR reporters provided a live account as they were escorted away from Hamilton Hall and The West Lawn, the area of campus where the sweep was occurring.
Further at City College in The Bronx, The Paper, a student run news source, reported student journalists who were live streaming the clearing of the encampment on their campus by NYPD for The Campus magazine were escorted off of campus by NYPD officers.
These restrictions on press freedom by police are in direct violation of the First Amendment and have set a dangerous precedent for the treatment of student journalists who’ve been working to document protests on their campuses. Student journalists must be allowed to work freely to ensure members of university communities are informed on what is occurring at their institution.
Here in Chicago, student reporters at The DePaulia and The Daily Northwestern have provided invaluable information from their campuses where student activists have formed encampments.
Students across the country exercising their First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly in a largely non-violent fashion have been met with disproportionate violent repression by police departments. NYPD used tear gas to disperse protestors at City College and Columbia students were thrown down stairs and slammed with barricades, the Columbia Spectator reported.
This level of force is abhorrent and is in some cases a total violation of the free speech rights which are granted in the United States Constitution and were later reaffirmed to apply to students in the Tinker v. Des Moines Supreme Court decision.
As a vital source of student thought and expression, we urge members of university administrations and law enforcement agencies here at Loyola, in the Chicago area and beyond to engage with student protestors and student media members with civility and nonviolence, while upholding their unalienable rights to free speech, assembly and press.
Featured image by The Phoenix staff.
