Education |

Pro-Palestinian demonstrations shift as protesters occupy buildings at UC Berkeley, St. Mary’s College

A correction to an earlier version of this article has been appended to the end of the article.

BERKELEY — The landscape of pro-Palestinian protests on university campuses in the Bay Area shifted again Thursday, with demonstrators who had been occupying a vacant building at one East Bay campus met with police intent on removing them, and those at another campus preparing to meet peacefully with their college president.

The separate developments showed two different paths for some of the local students protesting the war in Gaza, just days after encampments began winding down on other campuses.

Protesters who broke into a dilapidated UC Berkeley building were met with police Thursday evening, and at least a dozen people were arrested. Hours earlier, the group appeared to be making preparations for an extended stay, pitching tents and stacking wooden pallets to barricade themselves in at the Anna Head Alumnae Hall.

Meanwhile, at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, a group of students who began occupying a chapel Wednesday night — with eight of them beginning a hunger strike — were said to be preparing to meet with their college president ahead of a possible end to their protest.

The second day of the occupation at UC Berkeley began quietly, with protesters remaining silent about their demands and university officials giving little indication as to how the demonstration would be managed.

The building at Channing Way and Bowditch Street is a historical landmark that once housed the all-girls Anna Head School Complex and has been boarded up since catching fire in 2022.

“This is not nonviolent civil disobedience. The suspects are trespassing and vandalizing an unsafe, boarded-up, fire-damaged building next to People’s Park,” university spokesperson Dan Mogulof said in an email Thursday afternoon, reiterating remarks made Wednesday.

Around 7 p.m. Thursday, Mogulof said that protestors had been given a dispersal order about 30 minutes earlier and did not leave. He said several law enforcement agencies were involved in clearing out the site and that 12 people had been arrested.

The demonstration at UC Berkeley came a day after a pro-Palestine encampment in Sproul Plaza came down, following a deal between university administrators and a coalition of students, faculty and staff. That group agreed to break down their camp in exchange for the university’s promise to look into divesting from certain industries, including weapons manufacturers, mass incarceration and surveillance companies, as well as companies that use prison labor. Chancellor Carol T. Christ also issued a statement in support of an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.

A demonstrator occupying the vacant building — which demonstrators renamed Hind’s House after a 6-year-old Palestinian girl killed in Gaza — could be heard in an Instagram post Wednesday calling the university’s promises “empty.” They later said the group of a couple dozen people decided to occupy the building because the Sproul Plaza encampment wasn’t enough.

Mogulof said the university has confirmed the group involved in those negotiations is not associated with those currently occupying the hall.

The UC Berkeley Divest Instagram account reshared a post from the UC Berkeley Graduate Students for Justice In Palestine stating their solidarity with the protesters at the hall and condemning the university — and Mogulof directly — for attempting to “fragment and divide our movement for Palestine.”

“We reject the ‘good protester’ vs. ‘bad protester’ and ‘inside’ vs. ‘outside’ dichotomy. This divide is inaccurate, untrue, and destructive, especially in the face of UC Berkeley’s unwavering support of genocide,” the post read. “We are united in this movement. The brave students and organizers occupying Hind’s House are calling out UC complicity and its billions of dollars invested in war and militarism.”

The St. Mary’s College demonstrators, who have occupied the Chapel of the Most Blessed Virgin, said they are protesting the university’s lack of response to activists’ calls for disclosure of all its financial investments and divestiture from any corporations supporting Israel’s war in Gaza.

They also called on the college to not remove a vigil dedicated to Palestinian children killed in Gaza since Oct. 7.

Kylie Gutierrez, a co-organizer with the campus’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and fourth-year digital media student, said the hunger strike began because it did not seem as if the university was taking their demands seriously.

Students from both Students for Justice and Palestine and the Middle Eastern North African student organizations have been contacting the university’s president for about four months with little response, Gutierrez said.

Christine Hutchins, a St. Mary’s College spokesperson, said Thursday afternoon that the university was aware that a “very small number” of students was occupying the chapel. She said officials were working with the students to provide food and asking them to meet with administrators.

Hutchins said there was no plan to clear the chapel and that the school will continue with planned services and events. She said the school would wait to see what potential resolutions to the situation may exist after the meeting.

For months, UC Berkeley students, faculty and staff have been protesting on campus, demanding that the university disavow the war in Gaza and call for a permanent and immediate cease-fire, divest all financial holdings supporting Israel’s military operations, end academic partnerships with Israeli universities, and support Palestinian students, including establishing a Palestinian Studies program.

Their demands were prompted by the Israeli war in Gaza, launched in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attack in which Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 as hostages. More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military response, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

St. Mary’s Gutierrez said the students chose to occupy the chapel on Wednesday as it was the 76th anniversary of Nakba Day, which commemorates the displacement of Palestinians before and after the establishment of Israel. So far, the demonstration has been peaceful, and the students have allowed people to enter to exercise their religious rights, Gutierrez said.

“I wanted to call attention to the genocide that’s happening in Palestine. I didn’t want to be complicit in it in any sense of the word,” Gutierrez said.