BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A rally held by Indiana University faculty and attended by more than 200 people demanded the dismissal of IU President Pamela Whitten after her call for state police action to clear Dunn Meadow of pro-Palestinian protestors last week led to more than 50 arrests.
”We’re here to let you know that Pamela Whitten hasn’t accomplished anything, for you or IU,” announced IU Political Science Professor Abdulkader Sinno to the IU Board of Trustees from the steps of Bryant Hall. “The faculty, staff and students of IU have lost all faith in Pamela Whitten and her appointees. Trustee Quinn Buckner: please let Pamela go.”
Also attending the rally, but from the middle of Indiana Avenue as he was barred from the IU campus for five years after his arrest Saturday, was protest leader Bryce Green, a graduate student from Indianapolis.
”Now a great number of you were horrified at the level of violence and force that was used against students over the last few days,” Green told the crowd after Indiana State troopers, with armed observers on nearby roofs, forcibly detained dozens of protestors while dismantling their tents and scattering their possessions following a call to campus by Whitten and IU Police. ”They have forgotten the educational mission of this university, but with your presence here you’re preserving and safeguarding that mission.”
After the rally, protestors then marched to Dunn Meadow, minutes away, to support the encampment of students who would typically be studying for upcoming final exams.
”When we see people become inactive and unengaged in their political life,” said Green. “You see right now how a university or an institution can get out of control.”
At Dunn Meadow, the protestors are often joined by veterans of other demonstrations decades ago on the same patch of ground.
”I was here in 1985 for the anti-apartheid shantytowns that sprung up all over the country to pressure the University to divest from investments in South Africa,” said Tom Flynn, gesturing across the Meadow. ”We set up shantytowns with cardboard pallets and corrugated metal and all kinds of stuff and tents in this area right here and decided not to take them down to try to persuade the university to divest.”
Flynn recalled that as far back as 1969 during the height of the Vietnam War, the IU Administration had recognized Dunn Meadow as a designated place for students and protestors to air out their grievances and petition for change.
”They generally respected that this was a free speech zone as it was intended,” he said. ”They didn’t particularly want us here but there was nothing whatsoever like a militarized police response.”
ISP Superintendent Doug Carter told FOX59/CBS4 that troopers moved in Thursday and Saturday afternoons when they anticipated that “hate speech” would lead to violence.
Troopers were enforcing a rule that previously banned temporary structures only overnight, however, Carter said he didn’t want his officers to be involved in clearing the Meadow in the dark for safety reasons.
Rabbi Levi Cunin at the Chabad Center just across 7th Street from Dunn Meadow, with an Israeli flag draped from the eaves and a banner calling for the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and photographs of those captives in the windows, said that IU Jewish students have been spat on, stalked and harassed and taunted by chants of “Intifada” and “Death to Israel” from the encampment.
Shouts that Israel is a “Zionist racist state” that “must be destroyed” were common this afternoon.
The rabbi said that trespassing and attempted burglary reports have been filed with IUPD.
Carter said that protestors yelled “We are Hamas” during the arrests and that some of them personally expressed to him that, “They wanted me dead.”
Reporters for the Indiana Daily Student, the campus newspaper, told FOX59/CBS4 that they heard no such threats during Saturday’s police action, and police have not reported finding any weapons in the encampment though some protestors possessed mace canisters.
Tom Flynn was present when state troopers moved into Dunn Meadow this past weekend and ordered the protestors to dismantle their tents.
”I was here Saturday. I certainly haven’t seen any evidence of hate speech,” said Flynn, adding he had a personal reason to be aware of any anti-Semitic threats. ”My wife is Jewish. My children are both Jewish. They are horrified by what’s going on in Gaza.”
IU President Pamela Whitten turned down a request for an on-camera interview with FOX59/CBS4 to explain her decision to call in state troopers to dismantle the camp twice in the last five days and react to demands for her dismissal as a result of the Dunn Meadow incidents.
Instead, her office referred to Whitten’s statement from Sunday night where she largely justified the law enforcement action by partially reversing and amending decisions made by an “Ad Hoc Committee” last Wednesday night to enforce a ban on tents in the Meadow ahead of the pro-Palestinian demonstration.
The statement also said students and faculty would be consulted on future Meadow protest protocols and that IU was in the process of approving “temporary structures”, which could include tents, on a recurring 48-hour permit.
FOX59/CBS4 has also requested interviews with IU Board of Trustees President and former basketball star Quinn Buckner and other trustees seeking their reaction to the protests and the presence of ISP on campus to dismantle the Dunn Meadow encampment.