4 May 9 - 15, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents ‘Our Voices Are Being Heard’ How student arrests inspired UTD protesters. BY EMMA RUBY T wenty-one protesters were ar- rested and taken to Collin County jail on May 1 after erect- ing a pro-Palestinian encamp- ment at UT Dallas’ Chess Plaza. The students referred to the site as the Gaza Liberation Plaza. Police broke up the protest around 4:30 p.m., 12 hours after it formed. The arrested protesters were held at the jail overnight on charges of criminal tres- pass, inspiring a second, larger wave of pro- testers to surround the jail and chant for their releases throughout the night. The ma- jority of those arrested are UTD students, lawyers told CBSNews. Mousa Najjar, president of the UTD chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, was one of the detainees. Three faculty members, Associate History Professor Ben Wright, Assistant History Professor Rose- mary Admiral and Assistant Art History Professor Ali Asgar Alibhai, all remained booked in Collin County jail until the next morning. Noor Saleh, a third-year UTD student as- sociated with SJP, said multiple administra- tors had told the group to stop their protest within its first few hours. Saleh said threats of expulsion, police and state troopers were mentioned by administrators. “This is our way of keeping the conversa- tion about Palestine and Gaza and confront- ing UTD,” Saleh said. “You cannot just turn off your phone screen and turn a blind eye.” On the morning of May 1, the encamp- ment included around 10 tents blocked off by a ring of pallets, tires and signs. Around 100 students, UTD alumni and supporters were inside. Students inside the encamp- ment worked on homework, designed signs in support of Palestine and led chants calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and university divest- ment in weapons manufacturers. Organizers of the protest received a let- ter from the administration later in the af- ternoon that said campus protests were not allowed to have “tents or structures” and participants could face trespassing charges and school sanctions if they continued. State police officers in riot gear then approached the encampment, where they made arrests and dismantled the structure. Kevin Eltife, chairman of the University of Texas system’s Board of Regents, said in a statement April 30 that any “attempt to shut down or disrupt” a UT campus’s operations would be met with police action. “We will continue to call upon DPS to se- cure our campuses when needed,” Eltife said. “Moreover, we will make every effort to see that students who violate campus poli- cies and outside individuals and groups that violate state law are fully prosecuted.” Before the arrests began, Saleh said the number of pro-Palestinian protesters ar- rested on college campuses nationwide did not seem to dissuade people from joining UTD’s encampment. Just hours before UTD’s encamp- ment was built, nearly 300 Co- lumbia and City College students were arrested by New York police for similar protests. Police presence at schools like Columbia and the University of Texas have been “radicaliz- ing” for students on other cam- puses, she said. “The repression that we see at Columbia is proof that we have become a danger to our institutions,” Saleh said. “The more [they] try to silence us the more we prove our voices are being heard.” ‘Ratcheting Tensions’Phil Paolina, a professor of political science at the University of North Texas, agrees that heavy police presence at some protests has “encouraged” students to join the move- ment “when they wouldn’t have otherwise.” “When you feel illegitimate action has been taken against you or someone you identify with, it just strengthens your re- solve,” Paolino said. “It’s sort of what you’ve also seen at some of the universities where faculty are coming out in support of the pro- testers, not necessarily because they agree with the specific stance of the protesters but because they agree with the protesters hav- ing the right to be there and not be removed by the police.” Those who identify as a member of a his- torically oppressed group — such as Black or LGBTQ+ students — are likely to be increas- ingly sympathetic to the pro-Palestinian protests as police action ramps up, Paolino said. At UT Dallas, a group of protesters mo- bilized following the encampment raid and gathered at the university’s student union. The crowd that protested in the union and the crowd that surrounded the Collin County Jail were significantly larger than the encampment itself. UT Dallas closed the stu- dent union several hours early that Wednesday night, break- ing up the protest, although administrators recognized the second protest as aligning with campus protest policy. “UT Dallas requested assis- tance from outside law en- forcement in an effort to ensure the safety of our stu- dents, faculty and staff. Indi- viduals may peacefully assemble in the common outdoor areas of campus to exer- cise their right to free speech, but they may not construct an encampment or block path- ways,” UTD said in a statement. Many schools that have authorized po- lice action against protesting students, such as Columbia, UT and Tulane, have said that the protests were broken up because they were “disruptive” to campus life during fi- nals season. One UTD student, who asked not to be named, said universities are “miss- ing the point” of the protests entirely. “Genocide is disruptive. The students in Gaza don’t have any universities, their entire educations have been halted,” she said. “So how can I sit here in America, safe in my university, and complain about these pro- tests being disruptive?” The student said she has family mem- bers living in Palestine and was visiting the encampment between classes. The “ratcheted tensions” between pro- testers and universities could be due to fac- tors similar to those seen at college campus protests during the Vietnam War, Paolino said. In the case of Vietnam, newspaper and television imagery of the impact of warfare on the Vietnamese people radicalized some students towards the movement. Today, so- cial media imagery of Palestine is having a similar effect. In both instances, there was also a strong “interpersonal” divide between students in favor of the movement and those against it, Paolino said. How We Got Here The group organizing the encampment, Stu- dents for Justice in Palestine, is the same group that led last week’s sit-in in the hall- way leading to UTD President Richard Ben- son’s office. The organization has chapters at universities across the country. Protesters voiced their support for other chapters of the group, chanting “from Columbia to UTD, we are all SJP” and “from NYU to UTD, we are all SJP.” SJP’s UTD chapter is asking the univer- sity to divest its shares in the University of Texas Investment Management Company, or UTIMCO, which manages the endow- ment funds of the UT system and is invested in the companies Raytheon Technologies, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grum- man and General Dynamics. The sit-in ended after Benson agreed to meet with student representatives of SJP, but the meeting was called off this week when a pro-Israel student group was also in- vited to the conversation. Students told UTD’s student newspaper, The Mercury, they “rejected” Benson’s “two-sided” ap- proach to the issue. As arrests began, a small group of coun- ter-protesters stood near the encampment holding Israeli flags. “I saw the protests, I saw they were chanting ‘Israel go to hell,’ ‘From the river to the sea’ … Israel is the Jews’ homeland. It’s necessary, its existence is necessary, it’s vi- tal,” Jewish student Nathaniel Butterfield told WFAA after joining the counter-protest. ▼ CITY HALL NEED A PERMIT FOR PERMITTING DALLAS BOTCHED RENOVATIONS OF ITS NEW PERMITTING OFFICE. BY JACOB VAUGHN D allas has spent just over $20 million on a new building to house its Devel- opment Services Department, which handles the city’s permitting. However, the employees in the department are still stuck in their old office at the Oak Cliff Municipal Center, where they’ve been since the 1980s. Development services employees began to move into the new building after it obtained a temporary certificate of occupancy | UNFAIR PARK | Emma Ruby Students at the University of Texas at Dallas used pallets, posters and tires to build a barricade around a 10-tent encampment established early Wednesday morning. >> p6 “GENOCIDE IS DISRUPTIVE. SO HOW CAN I SIT HERE IN AMERICA, SAFE IN MY UNIVERSITY, AND COMPLAIN ABOUT THESE PROTESTS BEING DISRUPTIVE?” –UTD STUDENT
