“Four years later and we’re still writing the same headlines about protesters,” read Monday night’s text message from a friend. “History always has a way of repeating itself.”
Virginia Commonwealth University responded to a pro-Palestinian encampment by summoning shield-bearing riot police who sprayed students with a chemical irritant. The college showed remarkably little forbearance for what had been a peaceful protest before a busload of police, in an act of provocation and intimidation, rolled up to the Cabell Library to forcefully evict students from the “Liberation Zone for Gaza.”
The scene evoked instant memories of nearly four years ago, when Richmond police deployed tear gas on peaceful protesters at the Robert E. Lee monument during the social justice protests that followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
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Monday night showed us how little has changed, not just during the past four years, but the past 54.
On May 4, 1970, Ohio National Guard members opened fire on Kent State University students protesting Richard Nixon’s expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. Four students were killed and nine others were wounded.
Eleven days later, members of the Mississippi Highway Patrol and the Jackson Police Department killed two people and injured 12 at Jackson State University. Two years earlier, in another spasm of violence more related to racial tensions than antiwar sentiment, police killed three students and injured 28 at South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, South Carolina.
College officials can quickly lose control of events in calling police en masse to their campus. History shows us how easily things can go sideways.
By Tuesday afternoon, the lawn outside Cabell Library was tranquil, a stark contrast to the harrowing images of the police clash with protesters the night before as backlit students looked on in horror from inside the library.
Oscar Ferguson-Osborne, a junior from Silver Spring, Maryland, was one of the 13 people arrested. Tuesday afternoon, he lamented “the fact that the university would rather call in the police to spray its own students ... instead of listening to them for a single day, a single full day, listening to their demands.”
College administrators, if anything, need to be less inclined to sic police on protesters and more willing to listen and learn from them. Young people have always been the ones to bend the moral arc of this nation toward justice. To paint campus calls for a cease-fire in Gaza with the broad brush of antisemitism amounts to slander. But the oppressive response of the state creates a sad sense of déjà vu.
“As a City resident and individual who was tear gassed on Grand River Avenue in East Lansing during the Viet Nam war protests back in 1970, I was appalled by the video I saw on the news this evening,” Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, former head of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, said Monday. “The pictures I saw of the action tonight showed what appeared to be use of unnecessary force to break up the encampment. There was no actual threat to public safety presented by the encampment.”
“The one thing I would have hoped that we learned from past protest experiences is that violence always invites violence whether the initiator of the violence is the police or the protesters,” she said.
In response to multiple Virginia universities arresting and searching students engaged in pro-Palestinian protests, current ACLU of Virginia Executive Director Mary Bauer said in a statement: “Universities that attack their students’ free speech undermine our democracy — as well as their own mandate to foster learning and the robust exchange of ideas. The First Amendment guarantees people in Virginia the right to protest, including on behalf of Palestinians, so we’re disappointed to learn that Virginia universities have deployed police against their own students for expressing their views about the ongoing conflict.
“We urge public officials and university leaders across the Commonwealth to refrain from interfering with students’ free speech, and to carefully distinguish between real danger and mere controversy,” Bauer said. “Universities are charged with creating environments that encourage students to exercise their First Amendment rights — not ones that have license to violate students’ civil rights and civil liberties.”
This is a nice sentiment that assumes that Americans still believe in a Constitution, or the rule of law, as a former president who forswore his oath is poised to return to office with a vengeance. President Joe Biden’s unwavering support of Israel — in the wake of Hamas’ heinous terrorist attack and Israel’s brutal response in Gaza — has proven extremely unpopular with young progressives and Muslim voters.
Donald Trump, who saw “very fine people” among the racist hatemongers who converged on Charlottesville in 2017, called that rally “a little peanut” compared to the “hate” on college campuses today. It should be noted that Nazis and other torch-bearing white supremacists managed to march without being tear-gassed or pepper-sprayed by police.
VCU, in Monday’s aftermath, said the students had been warned, while employing the “outside agitators” trope.
“VCU respectfully and repeatedly provided opportunities for those individuals involved, many of whom were not students, to collect their belongings and leave,” the university said in a statement. “Those who did not leave were subject to arrest for trespassing.”
“While supporting an environment that fosters protected speech and expressive activity, VCU must maintain an atmosphere free of disruption to the university’s mission,” the statement continued.
It’s increasingly hard to figure out what higher education’s mission is nowadays. The First Amendment, critical thinking and academic freedom are under assault; elected officials and donors are increasingly eager to exert their influence to a micromanaging extent.
“VCU’s mission is our students and supporting our students to develop into civically-engaged people,” Amy Rector, director of the School of World Studies, said Monday night. Administrators clearly need the reminder.
Tuesday, an open letter was disseminated among VCU faculty and staff to “condemn the decision by university administration to deploy VCUPD, RPD, and VSP in riot gear to assault and arrest students and faculty who were protesting peacefully the night of April 29, 2024. This action, including the use of chemical irritants, violated the rights of students and faculty to express their freedom of speech and academic freedom, endangered the safety of all students in the area, and undermined any remaining trust in the integrity of university leadership to support our student body.”
“The outsized police response approved by President Rao and university leadership placed our students, their wellbeing, and their success at this university at risk,” the letter read.
Aries Loumis-Demetrakopoulos, a Ph.D. student at VCU, noted that Richmond Police had recently reached out to a pro-Palestinian activist about reducing the frequency of protests because the department was hamstrung in responding to a spike in gun violence.
“We can see that last night they do have the resources to handle this,” he said. “And let’s just be honest: We’ve never seen a response like we did last night to gun violence in Richmond.”
Sadly, the suppression of protest looks like a burgeoning Richmond tradition. The body of evidence on other college campuses nationwide is not encouraging.
We’ve always tended to overstate America’s embrace of dissent, as if those police dogs, fire hose blasts and tear gas cannisters aimed at protesters — and yes, even bullets — were somehow an aberration. At moments like this, our institutions function as designed.
These crackdowns seldom pass the test of history. But this history of suppression is bound to repeat itself until we acknowledge that this is who we are.
Michael Paul Williams (804) 649-6815