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“My office has requested a detailed accounting from the campus about what transpired in the early morning hours today,” Drake said today. “But some confusion remains. Therefore, we are also ordering an independent external review of both UCLA’s planning and actions, and the effectiveness of the mutual aid response.”
At about 4 a.m., a small group of student journalists for the Daily Bruin, including Christopher Buchanan, a student fellow for the CalMatters College Journalism Network, were confronted by a group of counterprotesters who began berating them. They targeted the staff’s news editor, calling her names, and blocked the journalists’ route to the Daily Bruin office. One shined a strobe light into Buchanan’s face while others attacked him as he fell to the ground.
In the past few days, UC Irvine and UCLA have declared their campus encampment protests illegal and in violation of the state education code against non-UC use of university property. Many pro-Palestinian student advocates see this position as an attempt to disrupt their advocacy. Despite police pushback, she said students and bystanders later created barricades around their encampment, allowing students to enter the area and receive supplies. “The students here all know the risks,” Sara said. “But regardless, they stood their ground and will continue to stand their ground until our demands are met.”
In 2020, racial justice organizations and Black student unions at the UC’s nine undergraduate campuses led protests over the police-custody murder of George Floyd, and to cast a light on other Black Americans killed by law enforcement officers. UC Riverside Black Studies professor and faculty coalition member Dylan Rodríguez described the Campus Safety Plan as largely reactionary. He said it is the UC’s attempt to quell a push for police abolition in the wake of the UC’s own crises and Floyd’s murder.