Student Organizers Are Shifting Tactics as Universities Impose New Restrictions on Protests

Most Bay Area universities are back in session for the fall semester, and with the return of classes comes the return of student organizers whose mass demonstrations and encampments rocked campuses across the country last spring.

Those organizers say they haven’t given up on their demands but are shifting tactics away from the 24/7 encampments.

In recent weeks, university leaders have also announced policy changes that students fear will violate their First Amendment rights and hamper their ability to organize effectively.

Susu Steyteyieh is a member of Students for Palestine at the University of San Francisco who helped organize that school’s roughly three-week-long encampment.

Two days after graduation ceremonies ended, campus employees cleared away the tents. The next day, 25 students, including Steyteyieh, were placed on interim suspension.

Steyteyieh said she signed a form accepting responsibility for violating student conduct rules, including failure to comply and disruptive conduct. In return, her suspension was lifted, and she and the others were placed on probation through next May. She said she doesn’t want to be suspended again, but that won’t stop her from organizing.

“I understand that I have to be careful,” Steyteyieh said. “But I also understand that there is nothing to stop me from organizing because of my duty as a Palestinian to be able to speak because that’s the bare minimum I can do.”

Steyteyieh also echoed what several student organizers across the Bay Area said regarding the fall semester. Some of the biggest priorities now include increasing outreach efforts, growing their base of members, coordinating across different campuses and using larger numbers to push for change.

For the first week of school, Students for Palestine set up a table at USF to engage with incoming students and also called on current members to wear keffiyehs to class.

“A large part of our idea was to be able to do something that is very low risk but still shows the presence of the Palestinian student movement here on campus,” Steyteyieh said.

Steyteyieh said student activists plan to resume talks with the university over their demands and will organize actions based partly on how cooperative administrators are in those talks.

USF President Paul Fitzgerald sent a message to the campus community earlier this month where he said that the university would not allow any more encampments. But he added that the university is working to establish a task force to review the school’s investment policies, a step toward the student demand for the university to divest from Israeli companies or those who profit from Israel’s war in Gaza.

The leaders of both the University of California and the California State University systems also announced in recent weeks that encampments will not be permitted. Both say they’re working to make rules more uniform across all campuses.

UC President Michael Drake directed each campus to compile a publicly available list of existing policies regarding protests. CSU leaders issued system-wide time, place and manner policies restricting protests, which are meant to supersede the policies of individual campuses.

In both cases, university administrators instructed campus leaders to establish or reaffirm bans on: protests blocking walkways or doorways, masking for the purposes of hiding one’s identity or intimidating others and setting up unauthorized structures on campus property. Drake also said that UC campuses should clarify that people on university property cannot refuse to provide identification if asked by university officials.

These announcements come amid pressure from state legislators. California Senate Bill 1287, first introduced in March, would require that university administrators “prohibit violent, harassing, intimidating, or discriminatory conduct that creates a hostile environment on campus.” First Amendment advocates have expressed concern that the bill could be used to crack down on student protests.

State legislators also decided this year to withhold $25 million in funding from the UC until the university system creates a “systemwide framework” surrounding free speech rules for all UC campuses.

UC Berkeley and San Francisco State are two campuses where administrators were notably hands-off and negotiated with students to end the encampments. Representatives from both campuses did not answer questions about whether the recent announcements would mean stricter enforcement of existing rules.

Zaid Yousef is a member of Students for Justice in Palestine at Berkeley and president of the campus Muslim Student Association. He called the announcement an effort to target and silence protests supporting Palestinians.

“It’s clear that this is just another attempt to honestly make Palestinian students and their allies more vulnerable to doxing, make them easier to identify, make it easier to suppress their speech,” Yousef said.

He also said that student organizers would not be deterred.

“Frankly, any threat and any punishment the UC can dream of pales in comparison to a single life lost in Gaza,” Yousef said.

A UC Berkeley spokesperson said that the university still has the latitude to respond in a considered fashion to each individual demonstration or protest, but it will not tolerate violence, harassment or discrimination.

Zoe Hampstead is co-chair of the Berkeley Faculty Association. Speaking personally, she described efforts by higher education institutions to tamp down on protests or equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism as a “kind of new McCarthyism.”

“In these actions, the language of inclusion and safety and civility is being used to justify repression,” Hampstead said. “It’s being used to militarize our campuses. It’s being used to discipline and criminalize forms of protest and free speech that have been on UC Berkeley campus since at least the free speech movement.”

According to Hampstead, the UC system has already disciplined more than two dozen UC staff and faculty for their involvement in campus protests, with consequences including temporary bans from campus and arrest. Hampstead said many of those disciplinary investigations are still ongoing.

Adam Naftalin-Kelman, executive director of Berkeley Hillel, a campus Jewish organization, expressed support for the new UC directive.

“I appreciate the clarity provided by the administration and President Drake regarding how they will support all students to ensure they can be on campus and express their whole selves without fear of intimidation and threats, including Jewish students,” Naftalin-Kelman said.

At San Francisco State University, student organizers said they aren’t thinking of returning anytime soon to encampments, which were resource-intensive and required lots of commitment from members.

“The encampments were super effective,” said Max Flynn, a member of Students for Gaza at SF State. “But one thing that we noticed was that we were kind of glued to the grass. We were glued to these tents. We weren’t able to go into different classrooms and talk. We weren’t able to table and talk.”

As part of current outreach efforts there, student activists set up tables outside of student housing during move-in week with free food from a local Palestinian restaurant, information on upcoming events and free screen printing to make shirts or signs.

“We have to come with open arms. We have to invite these new students to become organizers,” Flynn said. “Otherwise, we won’t get past the encampment. The encampment will be the peak, and that’s the opposite of what we want.”

Students say they also plan to strengthen connections with other pro-Palestinian activist organizations and like-minded labor groups, and several mentioned a planned September convention in Oakland as a kick-off point for that collaboration.

This story has been updated.