UVa student protest diminishes in size as it enters its third day

As of Thursday evening, there were roughly 40 protesters on UVa Grounds, mostly concentrated near the chapel adjacent to the university’s landmark Rotunda. The crowd included students, faculty and Charlottesville community members rallying in support of the Palestinian cause. Attendance Thursday was roughly half of what was seen the day prior and nowhere near the size of the hundreds-strong demonstrations and encampments at other schools.

The itinerary Thursday included qigong exercises and group yoga. UVa graduate students from multiple departments circulated through the so-called liberated zone throughout the afternoon offering assistance to student protesters with papers and studies. Spring semester classes ended Tuesday, and many students are now preparing for final examinations.

One noticeable absence: any official involvement or endorsement from the Students for Justice in Palestine group. That student organization led multiple well-attended rallies, protests and “teach-ins” earlier in the year. And while it has not openly disavowed the protesters on Grounds, multiple people who spoke with The Daily Progress under the condition of anonymity said that attendance has suffered without the group’s public support or private involvement. Students for Justice in Palestine has not responded to multiple Daily Progress inquiries, and the group has not published anything on its official social media accounts about the ongoing protest on Grounds.

While the crowd was much larger Wednesday, its activities were also subdued. Protesters spent the day blowing bubbles, singing songs, leading call-and-response chants, discussing Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza and posting signs about Grounds welcoming visitors to the “liberated zone,” calling for a “Free Palestine,” urging the United States to “Stop Funding Genocide” and demanding the school “Divest” from financial ties to Israel.

Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Arabs have warred over territory in the Levant for decades now, both believing the area to be a holy land for their people. The latest conflict started on Oct. 7 of last year, when Palestinian terrorist group Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking more than 240 hostages. Since then, Israel has laid siege to the Hamas-controlled territory of Gaza. The war has now claimed more than 34,000 lives, the majority of those Palestinian women and children.

An ocean away, protests have erupted on college campuses across the United States, where students, siding with the Palestinian cause, have demanded their schools divest entirely from the state of Israel. The country, they say, is engaged in genocide.

Protesters have been split on their other demands, some demanding the U.S. forsake its longtime ally in the Middle East and withhold military aid to Israel, some demanding that Israel lay down its weapons and negotiate a cease-fire, some demanding that Israel cede all of its territory to the Palestinians, or a combination of the three.

At UVa, student organizers issued a list of their own demands Wednesday afternoon. In an Instagram post from an account called @uvaencampmentforgaza, organizers asked that UVa administrators:

■ Disclose all direct and indirect investments made by the University of Virginia Investment Management Company, the agency charged with regulating the school’s endowment fund.

■ Divest from all weapons manufacturers aiding the killing of Palestinians, specifically Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon.

■ End all financial and academic ties with Israeli institutions, including study abroad programs, fellowships, internships, research and grants.

■ And ensure that students will not face any disciplinary action for engaging in protest.

Organizers issued a statement Thursday night that UVa has until noon Friday to respond. They did not say what would happen if the university did not.

“What we’re all here doing goes further than convictions about morality or about politics,” said one of the protest’s organizers, addressing roughly 50 people on the Lawn in front of the Rotunda around noon Wednesday. “We are all here involved in it as a part of a deep tradition of justice that is fueled by those who shoulder oppression with courage and with love, by those who shoulder it with trust that is built together, and together we are all here gathered in the struggle for a life worth living and to stand against those who get in our way.”

He thanked those in attendance for participating in the protest before leading them in a chant: “Viva, viva, Palestina.”

Despite the public nature of the protest, the event’s organizers have discouraged participants from speaking directly to the press and identifying themselves to members of the media, police or UVa administration. Participants have also been asked that they wear masks.

Since 1950, it has been a crime in Virginia for any individual over the age of 16 to wear a mask, hood or face covering with the intention of concealing their identity, a implicit tool to prosecute members of the Ku Klux Klan.

The masks worn at UVa’s “liberated zone,” at least according to organizers, are a “COVID-19 precaution.”

At one point, during a call-and-response chant Wednesday afternoon, an organizer alerted participants that a Daily Progress reporter was among them. The crowd paused for a brief moment before returning to its chanting.

Organizers have spent much of the past three days asking those gathered on Grounds to encourage others to join their ranks. While it may come as a surprise, given the school’s reputation for left-leaning politics and the fears of campuswide chaos stoked by Virginia Republicans earlier in the week, the protest at UVa has so far paled in comparison to those at other schools — and to the weeklong, thousands-strong “May Days” protest against the Vietnam War at the college in 1970, from which protest organizers said they took their inspiration for the day’s proceedings.

A similar “liberated zone” at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg attracted a crowd of hundreds over the weekend, and 82 protesters there were arrested for trespassing late Sunday night and early Monday morning. Police in riot gear stormed an encampment at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond Monday night, arresting 13 after using shields and tear gas to push into the crowd. At the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, 12 protesters were arrested Saturday evening.

Protesters at Columbia University in New York were arrested en masse Tuesday night after they occupied a building on campus and requested the school feed them. And over the past week, protesters and counterprotesters at the University of California, Los Angeles, have regularly come to blows.

Protesters at UVa, meanwhile, have mostly been battling the elements.

A light rain fell on demonstrators Tuesday night, and temperatures in Charlottesville hit a high of 86 degrees Wednesday and 89 degrees Thursday. Clear skies have offered little protection against the sun’s rays for demonstrators, who regularly have broken into smaller groups seeking shade under the branches of the ash trees that line the grassy Lawn and the towering ginkgo tree near the UVa Chapel. Those groups have participated in “teach-ins,” discussing the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and student-led protests in the U.S.

So far, there have been “no arrests or disruptions,” UVa spokesman Brian Coy told The Daily Progress.

Unlike other protests, there have also been no tents, Coy said. Protesters were told early on when they first started to gather on UVa Grounds Tuesday afternoon that erecting tents was strictly prohibited and would qualify as trespassing.

Protesters spent Tuesday and Wednesday nights on blankets and in sleeping bags.

Another university policy is that students on Grounds not use “amplified sound” without permission. Perhaps the most tense moment of the protest to date was when a protester leading a chant via megaphone was approached by a university administrator who asked him to stop.

What police presence there has been near protesters has been minimal.

UVa Police Chief Tim Longo made an appearance at one point Wednesday afternoon to speak with protesters about the university’s policies regarding trespassing and amplified sound.

As of Thursday evening, what protesters remained showed no sign of leaving their “liberated zone,” and the university showed no sign of asking them to do so.

“The protest activity ... has continued peacefully and in compliance with University policy since it began Tuesday afternoon,” the university said in a statement issued Wednesday night. “Organizers have complied with requests to remove tents and other prohibited materials. Additionally, a separate demonstration on the Lawn and a counterprotest near the Edgar Shannon Library were held and concluded Wednesday afternoon without incident. Representatives from UVA Student Affairs and University Police continue to engage with organizers to inform them of their right to demonstrate in public spaces, and to remind them of prohibited materials and behavior.”

Jefferson, who established UVa in 1819, was a vocal proponent of free speech and expression in the country’s earliest days. And the university has maintained that it will do all in its power not to infringe on those rights, so long as the safety of its community members is not threatened.

“The University is prohibited by the Constitution and our own values from restricting speech based on its content, even in cases where the content is hurtful or offensive,” the school said in its Wednesday night statement. “We do, however, enforce reasonable restrictions on the time, place, and manner of expressive activities, so as to assure the safety of our community and to avoid disruption to University life or the rights of others. As we become aware of planned expressive activities, University officials engage with organizers to inform them of these policies.”