Last April, students at University of California UC campuses began setting up tents to protest Israel’s war in Gaza. Lacking clear guidelines, university officials took different approaches to handle the situation—some waited, others negotiated, and some called the police.
This fall, UC officials will have a unified strategy to deal with such encampments. On Monday, the UC President directed all campuses to ban tents and other temporary structures on university property.
The new rules, announced just before the fall semester starts at UC Berkeley and UC Merced, also prohibit wearing masks to hide one’s identity, blocking walkways and building entrances, and refusing to identify oneself to university officials.
UC President Michael Drake explained in a letter that these rules aim to ensure free expression while maintaining safety and order on campuses.
The letter follows a series of pro-Palestinian protests across UC campuses in the spring, leading to hundreds of arrests, millions in damages, and, in some cases, violence against protesters. The new policies also respond to pressure from state lawmakers, who have withheld $25 million from the university’s budget to enforce existing protest rules.
Pro-Palestinian activists criticized the new rules, calling them an attack on free speech. Banan Abdelrahman, a spokesperson for UC Berkeley’s Students for Justice in Palestine, described the rules as a desperate attempt to weaken their movement.
The tent encampments, which began appearing in April, created a dilemma for UC administrators. Removing the tents would mean arresting students for peaceful protest, but allowing them to stay resulted in significant costs—UC reported $29 million in damages related to the protests.
While some protests ended peacefully, others led to violence. At UCLA, pro-Israel agitators attacked a camp on April 30, leading to a police intervention. Similar situations occurred at other campuses, often requiring law enforcement to clear the encampments.
Drake’s letter states that camping on university property is banned unless pre-approved, but UC Board of Regents member Rich Leib confirmed that no such approvals will be granted, indicating a “zero tolerance” policy.
Leib expects the protest movement to continue this fall, especially as the war in Israel nears its one-year mark, with over 40,000 deaths reported in Gaza, mostly civilians.
The UC system, with about 280,000 students, now joins the California State University system, which also banned encampments and masks last week.
Protesters argue that the ban reveals a bias against the Palestinian cause, questioning whether the same actions would be taken if the protests were about a different issue. Leib responded by stating that past protest movements, like Occupy Wall Street and Vietnam War protests, were different because they did not involve harassment or discrimination against students.