Around 1:30 p.m. on Monday, an Instagram post from UNC-Chapel Hill’s Students for Justice in Palestine warned of imminent police sweeps and called for “ALL HANDS ON DECK” at their Triangle Gaza Solidarity Encampment.
Haya, a Palestinian-American UNC junior and student organizer, said more than 200 people answered the group’s call within half an hour (while she spoke on the record Monday, Haya asked to have her last name omitted following the arrests). Protestors taped Palestinian flags to the campus’ central flagpole, and shouted pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli chants.
But the scene remained relatively calm until early Tuesday morning, when campus police swept in at dawn and arrested approximately 30 protestors.
At 5:30 a.m., Interim Chancellor Lee Roberts and Provost Christopher Clemens released a joint statement warning protests to leave Polk Place by 6 a.m. or face consequences, including possible arrest, suspension from campus, and expulsion.
At 6 a.m., UNC Police began making arrests, and UNC Facilities cleared the area. By 8 a.m., a fence had been erected around Polk Place, and students were not allowed to access it.
Kaleb, a UNC student who asked to use only his first name due to fear of retaliation from the university, said police “brutalized” protestors by pushing and shoving them. SJP, which organized the encampment, said online that police dislocated one protester’s shoulder, requiring medical attention.
“Police essentially tried to ruin us while we were asleep,” Haya said. She said the group believed that the arrested protestors were first held in Gerald Hall and later transported to the Orange County jail.
The pro-Palestine encampment had remained at Polk Place since Friday despite repeated warnings from the university that more than 30 tents violated the Facilities Use Standard that bans “temporary structures” on the lawn space.
UNC’s encampment included students from Duke University and NC State. It was at its largest during a Sunday rally, with SJP putting the total at more than 1,000.
Protestors are demanding the university divest from products and companies supporting Israel, end study abroad programs to the country, create an oversight commission for divestment, and commit to greater transparency on its investing principles.
“The university must divest as a sign of moral condemnation of the genocide that is occuring, so that the Palestinian people can gain their own liberation,” said Jorge, a UNC graduate student who asked to use only his first name due to fear of retaliation the university.
UNC SJP, through the advocacy group Palestine Legal, has also filed a Title VI Complaint on behalf of a professor and graduate student, alleging discrimination toward pro-Palestine students.
Encampments have been erected at over 20 U.S. universities around the country in the last week, and hundreds of students have been arrested. Sylvie, an SJP organizer who declined to give her last name, said while protestors did not fear police involvement, they “anticipated it” after arrests at campuses like Emory University, the University of Texas Austin, Columbia, and Yale.
Organizers developed a system to show which participants were willing to be arrested: students with yellow bandanas preferred to avoid arrest, while those with red bandanas were willing to be taken into custody.
At 5 p.m. Monday, organizers announced that the increased police monitoring of the encampment had subsided.
Reverend Kaleb Graves, a justice coordinator at the Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Durham who came out in support of the encampment, said he wasn’t surprised that police had not intervened on Monday. “There seems to be an understanding to not be in each others’ way, until it’s time for something to actually change,” said Graves.
Monday did not, however, pass without any conflict.
While Islamic prayer was occuring around 5:20 p.m., around 10 counter-protestors carrying two Israeli flags approached the encampment. One was Jared Wasserman, a UNC freshman who said he had a swastika drawn on his dorm room door earlier this year and said the protests have made him feel more unsafe on campus.
“They’re shouting for the death of innocent civilians and innocent Jewish people,” he said. “As a Jewish person, I have to stand up for my people and what is right.”
UNC’s Hillel, a Jewish student organization, released a statement on Sunday calling the encampment “disruptive and deeply problematic” especially due to the timing of Passover and the end of the academic year.
Adam Goldstein, a professor of family medicine, stood on the outskirts of the encampment with a sign displaying three hostages Hamas took from Kibbutz Erez.
“The fact that there aren’t hundreds of people like me out here suggests that people are scared,” Goldstein said. “We’ve seen a tremendous escalation over the past few days.”
Around 6 p.m., protestors carrying four tents and a variety of signs disrupted a Carolina Alumni event headlined by former UNC-CH chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz. He appeared unfazed as protestors chanted “Shame!” at him while he took selfies with students.
S, a community member and pro-Palestine activist, was frustrated by administrative attention to the tents while seeming to ignore what the students were asking for. “They just don’t want us here,” S said. “They don’t care about our demands.”
Still, there were moments of joy in the protests. At one point, a group of demonstrators burst into the Cupid Shuffle, a little girl wrote “FREE GAZA” in blocky letters on the sidewalk with bright chalk.
Jorge said community members have provided an outpouring of supplies. “Anything people can need has been donated by the community,” he said. “It’s been very beautiful to be a part of.”
Tuesday is UNC’s last day of classes. As the university enters finals week, what will happen next is unclear. Haya said a vigil originally planned for Tuesday night is being turned into a protest against the arrests of protestors.
SJP organizer Sylvie said the protestors are committed. “We don’t want to be here, we want to work on our finals too,” she said. “But the university won’t listen to us.”
Katelyn Cai is a Robertson Scholar studying a self-designed major at Duke University and the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. She also reports for the City & State desk at the Daily Tar Heel.
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