Penn protest: More tents erected in defiance of disband order; demonstrators say they will not comply with a request for IDs

Pro-Palestinian protesters stood firm at the University of Pennsylvania Sunday, entering the fourth day of an on-campus encampment that grew — despite an explicit dispersal order — as organizers and college administrators met to discuss student demands.

As darkness fell, there were about 30 tents still pitched, and a few hundred people protesting the war in Gaza remained gathered in the center of campus, making plans in the event that police could imminently try to disband their encampment.

People crouched together in lantern light shortly after 8:30 p.m. as an organizer told the group that within the next few hours, Penn police and administrators would be asking to check protesters’ identification. Encampment members would not be complying, the organizer said, suggesting Penn’s goal was to separate students from nonstudents, and that nonstudents would be asked to leave.

City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier said she has been trying to talk to University of Pennsylvania President J. Larry Jameson about the pro-Palestinian encampment, but he won’t take her call.

“I don’t feel like that’s acceptable when there are serious things happening,” said Gauthier, a West Philadelphia native who represents the 3rd District, which includes West and Southwest Philadelphia. “It’s important for all the stakeholders involved to communicate. I’m reaching out to the president of Penn an an important stakeholder, an important leader of this community.”

Some of her staff members were at the encampment Sunday night and reached out to The Inquirer to express frustration.

Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine is circulating an internal petition urging the University of Pennsylvania not to disband the pro-Palestinian encampment or pursue discipline against students who are participating.

It has received more than 1,200 signatures in about five hours, according to Dagmawi Woubshet, an associate professor of English and a member of the group.

“We implore you not to escalate the situation by forcibly clearing out the encampment or threatening disciplinary action against any of the students involved,” the petition said. “We urge you to allow the students to continue their peaceful protest.”

Just after 10 p.m. Sunday, Penn issued a three-sentence statement, acknowledging the president and provost had met with student protesters Saturday night and “reiterated… the importance of complying with Penn’s policies,” including providing identification when asked to insure the safety of everyone on campus.

“Tonight, representatives from Open Expression communicated Penn’s identification policies and informed the protestors of their obligation to comply with these policies,” the statement said.

Students in the pro-Palestinian encampment have said they will not provide their IDs and were bracing for the university’s response.

Protesters at Penn prepared to face arrest Sunday evening as organizers said they did not intend to comply with the university’s plan to check for student identification and ask non-students to leave.

Protesters wore green, yellow, and red tape on their clothes and backpacks, labeling who was and was not willing to be arrested for the cause.

Those in the green group were not willing to be arrested, while those in yellow did not intend to get arrested but would if necessary. In the event that police move into the encampment, an organizer told the group, the yellow team’s mission would be to try and preserve peoples’ belongings “so that if we want to do this again in the future, we can.”

Early this evening, a University of Pennsylvania Fire Department official searched the encampment on the College Green for fire hazards, drugs and alcohol, according to a report in The Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper.

Fire marshals checked every tent in the pro-Palestinian encampment, which was erected on Thursday evening, the newspaper reported.

A fire marshal said because of how close the tents were to each other, it was not a safe setup, according to encampment organizers, the newspaper reported. Students were told to establish a clear exit path from the encampment, according to the report. An organizer said barricades installed by the university prevent them from spreading out the tents. A barricade near College Hall was moved, to create more space, the report said.

As darkness fell Sunday, a few hundred people protesting the war in Gaza remained gathered in the center of the University of Pennsylvania’s campus, making plans in the event that police could imminently try to disband their encampment.

People crouched together in lantern light as an organizer told the group that within the next few hours, Penn police and administrators would be asking to check protesters’ identification. Encampment members would not be complying, the organizer said.

The organizer, whose name was not immediately available, said the goal was for Penn to separate students from non-students, and non-students will be asked to leave.

One pro-Palestinian encampment at an area college is no more.

Students at Haverford College this afternoon voluntarily took down their encampment, which had consisted of about 15 tents outside Founders Hall, according to a college spokesman.

Bryn Mawr College senior Maddy Kessler said that is because Haverford students are combining with Bryn Mawr College students. An encampment went up on Bryn Mawr's college green on Saturday.

Students staging the pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Pennsylvania were heartened to see their support was appreciated in Gaza, said a professor with Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine.

“University of Pennsylvania, thank you all,” said a sign held by a woman in Rafah, a Palestinian city in the southern Gaza Strip, according to a post on Twitter by the faculty group. Two other photos were included, too, expressing appreciation for Penn’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment.

“They’re risking so much, to make a principled statement,” said Dagmawi Woubshet, an associate professor of English and member of the faculty group. “I’m sure it is heartening to see how they are being received in Gaza.”

With about 300 people in attendance at a Passover seder at the pro-Palestinian encampment on Penn's campus, a man in a blue shirt that read “I stand with Israel” walked around with a large knife in his belt.

Within minutes, he was taken into custody by campus police. The man was identified by his wife as Yosef Cohen, 70, of Philadelphia.

Maddie Cohen said her husband “meant no harm,” and the knife was a “war relic.”

The strength of the encampment protest model seen at the University of Pennsylvania and on college campuses throughout the nation is that it’s not “one-and-done,” said Mark Bray, a Rutgers historian, activist, and former organizer of Occupy Wall Street.

Rather than the pro-Palestinian demonstrators going home after a solitary march, Bray said the encampment movement “creates this kind of ongoing spectacle of protest.”

Of course, he noted the college encampments may have a natural expiration date when the semester ends. (For Penn, the spring term ends on May 14, and commencement takes place the following week.)

As some of the participants in the "No Hate on Campus" rally left, Penn junior Joseph Hochberg played Hebrew songs from a hand-size black speaker.

Some of his friends declined to be part of the rally out of “concern for their safety,” according to Hochberg. But, he said he does not feel scared on campus.

“The things they are chanting over there [at the pro-Palestinian encampment] are anti-Jewish, anti-American,” said Hochberg, as the protesters chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

As the protest encampment in support of Palestinians perseveres on the University of Pennsylvania’s College Green, students across the region are taking part in similar demonstrations.

Four colleges in the greater Philadelphia area have erected encampments on their college greens: Penn, Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore, and Haverford.

On Sunday night, Swarthmore Voice for Jewish Peace is expected to host an open community seder on the school’s protest encampment, calling the event “a momentous gathering of Jewish solidarity with the Palestinian people and the pro-Palestine student movement in the United States.”

Minutes after pro-Israel protesters finished a nearby rally on Penn's campus, more than 100 of them marched toward the pro-Palestinian encampment.

With 25 campus police officers present and the groups separated by a path and barricades, the demonstrators chanted at each other.

“Rape is not resistance,” chanted the pro-Israeli side protesters. “Intifada the revolution,” replied the pro-Palestinian protesters.

As the pro-Palestinian encampment marks its fourth day, a group of Penn faculty and students gathered for a “No Hate on Campus” rally.

About 250 people congregated outside the Annenberg Center for the performing Arts – away from the encampment area – draped in Israeli flags.

“We hereby implore the university to take action,” Benjamin Abella, professor of emergency medicine, told the crowd, as they chanted “words are not enough.”

Nada Abuasi's boots were still wet Sunday morning after overnight rain surprised members of the encampment. As a Drexel student organizer, she had spent the night at College Green since the protest began.

“Nothing we do here, including arrest, is at all comparable to what is going on in Gaza,” Abuasi said. “It’s up to the administration whether or not they want to put us at risk.”

On Friday, interim president J. Larry Jameson ordered protesters to disband their encampment "immediately,” citing a violations of school policies.

Wet blankets, jackets, and hoodies hanging from police-imposed barricades is how the fourth day of protest began at Penn's encampment.

The 40 people who spent the night at College Green woke up to the scent of wet grass after an overnight thunderstorm.

As they hang out, eat apples and Doritos, and wait for their clothes to dry, more tents are being erected at the site in defiance of an order Friday night from interim president J. Larry Jameson to disband "immediately."

As pro-Palestinian protesters at Penn enter a fourth day in their on-campus encampment Sunday, organizers said in a statement that after meeting with the university’s interim president and provost, they were “disappointed to hear that administrators viewed our demands as unreasonable.”

In the statement, organizers said they asked the university Saturday evening to “disclose, divest, defend,” calling on Penn to disclose its financial holdings, divest from any investments in the war, and provide amnesty for pro-Palestinian students facing discipline over past protests.

But in the meeting with school leaders, organizers said they did not make much headway. “This indicates a failure on the part of university leadership to understand why we have established our encampment,” they said in the statement.

Pro-Palestinian protesters maintained their on-campus encampment Saturday for a third day — with no signs of disbanding — defying the Friday night order by Penn’s interim president to end it “immediately.”

Late on an overcast, chilly Saturday afternoon, only a handful of security officers were near the site with no evidence of any move to evict the protesters, who are demanding that Penn divest itself of any Israel-related investments and provide amnesty for pro-Palestinian students who might be subject to discipline over past protests.

About 400 people were gathered at College Green on Saturday evening, where about 35 green, orange and gray tents had been pitched. Supplies of fruit, vegetables, water, almond milk, coffee, and pudding were on hand for those who were staying around or making a night of it.

Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine, the group that held a walkout on Thursday as tents were erected on Penn’s campus, added its objections to Penn president J. Larry Jameson’s order to disband the encampment.

They wrote that Jameson and other university leaders have done an “about face” and have not observed due process.

“Clearly, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment is a principled and peaceful demonstration,” they wrote. ”We bear witness that students have not violated any policies or contributed to a hostile environment. They have a right to demonstrate. They have kept noise down at night; they have de-escalated the aggressive behavior of counter protestors...”

As students protesting the Israel-Hamas war at college campuses across U.S. dug in Saturday and dozens of demonstrators were arrested, some universities moved to shut down encampments after reports of antisemitic activity.

With the death toll mounting in the war in Gaza, protesters nationwide are demanding that schools cut financial ties to Israel and divest from companies they say are enabling the conflict. Some Jewish students say the protests have veered into antisemitism and made them afraid to set foot on campus.

Police in riot gear cleared an encampment on the campus of Northeastern University in Boston on Saturday. Massachusetts State Police said about 102 protesters were arrested and will be charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct. Protesters said they were given about 15 minutes to disperse before being arrested.