The University of California (UC) Board of Regents approved the expansion of military equipment within University of California Police Departments (UCPD) on Sept. 19. This decision comes after a year of on-campus protests and encampments, resulting in UC schools taking additional steps to further silence student voices. The increased militarization granted to the UCPD highlights an extensive history of suppressing protest movements and placing institutional interests above students and workers.
The UC system has once again demonstrated its commitment to operating the university as a profit-focused business and oppressing students and faculty.
Despite opposition from students and faculty, the proposal was approved, allowing campuses to gain access to drones, pepper balls and impact munitions, among other weapons.
Although these weapons are described as “less lethal,” they have the potential to cause significant damage and may result in death.
During the Board of Regents meeting, Jonah Walters, a UCLA Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Institute of Society and Genetics, spoke out against the approval of these “less lethal” weapons.
“These munitions can and do cause major injuries, including lethal ones. The evidence for this is simply indisputable. Even the owner’s manual of one of the air rifles UCLA is requesting to buy warns that shots to the ‘head, face, eyes, ears, throat, groin or spine’ could cause ‘severe or permanent injury or death.’ Exposure to capsaicin and its analogs can cause symptoms like blindness, gagging and obstructed breathing and have been linked to numerous deaths. Please do not approve these purchases,” Walters said.
The current military equipment inventory includes weapons such as rifles and launchers, as well as stream aerosols for crowd management. The total equipment cost for the 2022-2023 school year was $79,162.92. This extensive budget could have been allocated to address student needs such as housing and resources for low-income students. Instead, it was used to control and intimidate the student population.
On April 29, students at UC Irvine created an encampment on the Physical Sciences Quad, demanding that UCI divest from companies and investments that financially support Israel and that the school “end their complicity in the genocide of Palestinians.” Instead of listening to students in good faith, UCI suspended the student negotiators. This attempt to silence and defame students is a clear example of the lengths to which the university will go to continue its corrupt agenda of placing profit and personal interests over its students.
On May 15, student protesters expanded the encampment to the Physical Sciences Lecture Hall during a rally commemorating the 76th anniversary of the Nakba, the Arabic term for catastrophe. The Nakba refers to the ethnic cleansing and displacement of approximately 750,000 Palestinians by the Israeli military in 1948. Riot officers from 22 different police departments, called by the UCI administration, dismantled the Gaza Solidarity Encampment and made 47 arrests in response to the peaceful rally.
Officers were seen pointing guns at students, violently arresting students and striking protesters with batons.
UCI Professor Dr. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard was asked if she was concerned about jeopardizing her career as she was being arrested.
“What job do I have if the students don’t have a future?,” she told ABC 7.
According to arrested students, individuals were subjected to their religious head coverings removed, physical beatings, verbal insults and not being allowed to sleep in their jail cells.
“The number of physical injuries reported to me while we were interviewing the people arrested was out of scale. It was across all genders and in some cases too severe that people left [immediately] … to get to an emergency room.” said a member of the Irvine Faculty Association police liaison team.
The brutality and harsh treatment of arrested students and faculty members was aided by UCI’s commitment to silencing activists and opposition to the university’s involvement in genocide.
“People apprehended in this action got punched and their arms twisted back to the point of injury. All the arrested folks were grabbed, searched/groped…[they were] bound and chained, subject to abusive language and stares, stripping, random unaccounted scheduling, and isolation in holding cells.”
Universities exist to educate and cater to their students’ needs, not profit off of them. Yet, student protesters were labeled as a threat by their own university for opposing their involvement in genocide.
“UCI had repeatedly violated university procedures and the Constitution with its use of indefinite interim suspensions” a member from Students for Justice in Palestine told New University. “[This is] a clear tactic to target the movement demanding the university divest from genocide,”
UCI Associate Professor of English and Chair of the Irvine Faculty Association, Annie McClanahan, believes that the new campus climate policies announced by President Drake are a cause of concern. She also said it was contradictory to UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman’s book “Free Speech on Campus.”
“In the book, Gillman and his co-author Erwin Chemerinsky correctly extend the idea of protected ‘speech’ to acts of protest like sit-ins, boycotts, and attempts to occupy public space and decry efforts to stifle such speech,” McClanahan told New University. “Yet the email we received today suggests that UC intends precisely to ‘stifle and punish protesters.’”
The email refers to the UC-wide campus climate update outlining new policies that will enforce new mask guidelines, restrictions on free movement and require individuals to reveal their identity when asked by a university official.
Gillman said in his book, as referenced by McClanahan, that he “saw first-hand how officials attempted to stifle or punish protesters in the name of defending community values or protecting the public peace,” even though, in fact, “free speech assisted the drive for desegregation, the push to end the war and the efforts of historically marginalized people to challenge convention and express their identities in new ways.”
The chancellor contradicted his words by issuing false statements regarding the encampment, suspending the negotiators and calling riot police to brutalize protesters “in the name of defending community values or protecting the public peace.”
Gillman has made it clear that his priorities lie in continuing to invest in weapon manufacturing companies, despite their involvement in supplying weapons to Israel to bomb Palestine and Lebanon.
This is not the first time anti-war protesters have been met with intimidation tactics and arrests by the university.
In 2010, the Irvine 11 students who disrupted a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren were handcuffed and detained. Ten protesters were charged with misdemeanors and sentenced to fines, 56 hours of community service and three years of probation.
UCI’s Muslim Student Union was suspended for half an academic year following the disruption, despite claims that they played no part in the disruption.
The group opposed Oren’s presence on campus in a statement, commenting on the ambassador’s service in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), the massacre of 1,400 people in Gaza a year prior and UCI’s financial ties with Israel.
Following the disruption, concerns about free speech sparked a widespread debate on campus.
Rei Terada, a UCI professor and expert on free speech, stated that she had never seen someone attempt to enforce harsh rules for a “politically charged” event on a college campus in her 20-year career.
The harsh treatment of the Irvine 11 has been attributed to Islamophobia and racism on college campuses. UCI continues to uphold systemic racism by intimidating students whose interests and demands do not align with the university.
District Attorney Tony Rackauckas described the students’ behavior as “thuggery.”
“In a civilized society, we cannot allow lawful assemblies to be shut down by a small group of people using the heckler’s veto,” he said in the courtroom for the verdict.
The term “civilized society” not only demonstrates racism and bias but also implies that while it is acceptable to have a speaker who was in the IDF and participated in horrific acts, the line is drawn at students protesting against their presence on campus. The term “thuggery” is used to label and dehumanize men of color. The use of race-specific language portrays people of color as inferior and inhuman. These words and UCI’s actions speak volumes about the university’s disregard for its students. UCI failed at protecting its students and has consistently shown that they are disposable.
The university’s backing of racism, violence and retaliation is clear. The UC system is taking all measures possible to force its students into silence.
Rather than investing in students, UCs continue to fill their own pockets. Gillman’s salary has increased to $895,000 annually. Yet, students are being neglected, with most of them being unable to afford housing and tuition costs.
While UCI continues to gloat about being a top-10 university and fundraising millions of dollars, students are forced to take out loans or drop out. Military weapons will be purchased to further militarize campuses and harm students, all to “ensure a safe, inclusive campus climate.”
Until the university and UC system take steps to address the oppression they have perpetrated, they will remain a corrupt business, with a legacy tarnished by the actions of the UC system and our very own Chancellor.
Fiat Lux.
Malaika Sultan is a News Staffer for the 2024-2025 quarter. She can be reached at malaiks1@uci.edu.
Edited by Zahira Vasquez and Jaheem Conley.