The state troopers came in with guns, batons, pepper spray, shields and a warrant. They raided the encampment, forced pro-Palestinian protesters to their knees, zip tied their hands — in some instances, their feet — and loaded them onto the cream and crimson Indiana University buses.
This show of power and dramatic display of domination happened just over a week after IU faculty voted no confidence in IU President Pamela Whitten, Provost and Executive Vice President Rahul Shrivastav and Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs Carrie Docherty. It came just a few days after the Indiana Graduate Workers Coalition’s three-day strike. And it occurred on the same day as the Indiana Daily Student’s scheduled walkout in response to the university administration potentially forcing the paper to take drastic budget-reducing measures.
I was at the Monroe County Public Library on Thursday, where we fashioned a temporary newsroom, when I saw the videos and the livestreams of state troopers forcefully detaining and arresting protesters in Dunn Meadow, the university’s designated assembly zone. The screams and pleas among the crowd were ear-piercing and terrifying. The feeling of disgust I had as I watched my peers, some older and some younger than myself, being taken into custody for a peaceful demonstration is indescribable.
I thought about all the similar situations happening on college campuses across the country: at Columbia University, the University of Texas at Austin, Northwestern University and the University of Southern California. I thought about the Kent State shootings in 1970, when student protesters were shot by the Ohio National Guard, and how it isn’t so far-fetched to assume something like that will happen somewhere across the country. I thought about all these things, and I was physically sick to my stomach.
* * *
“They’ll say we’re disturbing the peace, but there is no peace,” Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States said. “What really bothers them is that we’re disturbing the war.”
In 1969, the university designated Dunn Meadow as the “Indiana University Assembly Ground.” In theory, any student or group of students, regardless of their point of view and any prior notice, can use this area for political demonstration. There are specific rules, but they’re simple — if a demonstration warrants the need for “signs, symbols or structures,” IU officially asks the following:
- Any object be “continually carried” or removed from the hours of 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.
- Any uncarried object left during those hours requires advance notice that “should be granted without regard to the point of view or the idea being expressed.”
On April 24, the eve of the protest, the IU administration formed a mysterious Ad Hoc Committee to update the rules to ban the use of structures, such as tents, altogether. The encampment began at around 11 a.m., April 25, at Dunn Meadow and lasted until about 4 p.m., when Indiana State Police troopers raided and began arresting protesters on charges of criminal trespassing, battery and resisting law enforcement.
This arbitrary rule change indicates the university administration is willing to jump through hoops and invoke obscure statutes to discriminate against certain protesters and enact harsh measures against certain protests. But, regardless of any capricious change in the rules, every arrest performed at Dunn Meadow on Thursday was an illegitimate one. The detained will have this day on their record, but there is no doubt history will vindicate them.
* * *
The inability of the IU administration — and, chiefly, the inability of Whitten — to properly deal with this crucial moment on our campus is indicative of its inability to properly run our campus in the first place. The vote of no confidence last week was a sobering demonstration of this: faculty voted no confidence in Docherty by 75%, in Shrivastav by 91.5% and in Whitten by 93.1%. And, as of April 30, a petition demanding Whitten to resign has over 2,500 signatures.
The IU administration is not just unpopular — it is almost universally condemned on campus.
Everything from the suspicious manner Whitten was chosen to succeed former President Michael McRobbie to her refusal to strongly defend Caitlin Bernard when she was verbally attacked and libeled by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has been the subject of controversy for those who follow campus politics. And, since then, her administration has repeatedly failed to recognize the IGWC, which has only further stained her image.
The past several months have been pivotal for universities across the country. We’ve seen university presidents resign, and many more have been the subject of no-confidence votes. And as the student protest activity regarding the war in Gaza and the genocidal actions of Israel reach a head, we’re seeing more and more university administrations fail to properly address the unrest. This is symptomatic not of an unprecedentedness but of a system that must be dissected and rebuilt with the interest of progressivism and intellectualism in mind.
In an internal email to faculty, Whitten failed to comment on the arrests that took place. “Once prohibited structures were removed, the protests continued peacefully,” she wrote, conveniently leaving out the part where cops threatened students with assault weapons and less-than-lethal ammunition. But no matter. There is nothing she or any of her staff could do or say that would remedy the violence. What has been done will remain done.
And if we’re being honest with ourselves, we should admit the administration, as it currently stands, has no interest in enacting any remedies: The university will not sever its historic partnership with the Crane Naval Base, it will continue to invest in Israeli actors, and Whitten will speak at the spring 2024 commencement as though nothing has happened.
But I promise you, we will not forget.
* * *
I wrote the conclusion to this column from Dunn Meadow on day one of the demonstrations. There’s an abundance of protesters around me, too many to really count. There’s a speaker with a megaphone in the middle shouting “Whitten, Whitten, what do you say? How many kids have you killed today?” and “Free, free Palestine! Free, free, free Palestine!” to a continuous drumbeat. The police have dispersed from the meadow at this point, but there remain police with rifles on the roof of the Indiana Memorial Union.
I sit here in the grass, several feet away from the center of the circle, protesters standing, chanting and swaying to the beat all around me. What I see isn’t a terroristic group of students thirsty for blood; instead, I see a coalition of young people gathered for the sake of one goal: peace. The violent actions of the IU Police Department and the Indiana State Police only about an hour ago have not deterred these students for even a second. The fight for justice continues, and it will continue until justice has been realized.
And I firmly believe not a single university administrator, not a single elected official and not a single police officer in this country will get in the way of that simple fact.
What does justice look like? It looks like the end of the IU and Crane Naval Base partnership that perpetuates the military-industrial complex. It looks like the university disclosing their business dealings and divesting from Israeli companies. It looks like Whitten and Shrivastav, and all others who’ve worked to dispel these protests, resigning in disgrace. And it looks like a world where Palestine is free.
Joey Sills (he/him) is a junior studying English with a minor in political science.
