Why Penn became the hotspot for Gaza protests in Philly instead of Temple, Drexel, or La Salle

At some colleges, protests, sit-ins, and their latest iteration — encampments — have long been part of the campus culture.

At Swarthmore College, sit-ins go back at least to 1969, when students were calling for more Black student enrollment. The same is true at the University of Pennsylvania, where people still talk about how students occupied College Hall for six days that year over concerns about the school’s war-related research and expansion into West Philadelphia and how it might displace residents.

So, it’s not surprising that Swarthmore has a pro-Palestinian encampment on its campus and Penn had one, too, until Friday before police dismantled it, with the university citing disruption and safety concerns.

» READ MORE: Philly Police have cleared Penn’s Pro-Palestinian encampment and arrested 33 protesters

The reasons why one campus has a culture ready for encampments while another has no trace of protest are myriad — and intertwined — with factors ranging from the socioeconomic status of students to the geography of the school’s location.

A history of protest is one factor that can make some colleges more likely places for encampments, experts say, because they have a tradition of campus activism passed down through generations. Campuses with higher percentages of students who are of Middle Eastern descent or Muslim could raise the possibility, too. It also might depend on how welcoming a college administration is to protest — those that are might see more — and how able the students involved are to risk arrest or discipline.

“But sometimes repression leads to more activism,” said Robert Cohen, a New York University professor who has studied the history of protest. “It’s not a straight line. It’s not an easy formula. It’s complicated.”

That complexity is true in the Philadelphia region. Most of the campuses that have had encampments over the last couple weeks — Bryn Mawr, Princeton, and Haverford, in addition to Penn and Swarthmore — are among the region’s most elite, highly selective colleges. Several, including Haverford and Swarthmore, are rooted in Quaker culture, which has an activist tradition.

» READ MORE: While a few other universities reach compromises with protesters, why can’t Penn?

Then there’s Rutgers, New Jersey’s state flagship, and it was far from the only state university in the nation to have an encampment.

The vast majority of colleges in the Philadelphia region, however, including Pennsylvania State University, Villanova, West Chester, and La Salle, did not get encampments. Neither did Drexel or Temple, though students from those universities were participating at the Penn encampment.

Compared with the height of protests that happened in 1970 during the Vietnam era, the latest batch is pretty small. More than four million students were taking part in protests back then at about 500 campuses, said NYU’s Cohen.

“This is very mild,” he said of the recent encampments. “This is the biggest protest on campuses in the 21st century, but that’s not saying much.”

At Villanova, more than 100 students marched and protested on the campus in late April but decided against an encampment.

Students were told that they would face academic probation and possible suspension if they erected an encampment, said Stephanie Sena, an anti-poverty faculty fellow at Villanova’s law school.

» READ MORE: Is the call to divest feasible? Here’s why there are hurdles to Penn protesters’ demands.

“Students expressed concern because they are at Villanova on scholarship and if they got suspended, they could have that scholarship taken away,” she said “It’s very important to understand students in the 60s didn’t have tuition (prices) the way we do, or student debt the way we do.”

Jonathan Gust, a Villanova spokesperson, said that a member of the university’s student life staff told the students at a meeting about the responsibility to peacefully assemble but that the topic of an encampment didn’t come up.

Villanova, Sena noted, also is a suburban school and an encampment there may not get the same support and resources from the surrounding community that Penn’s received in the city, she said.

» READ MORE: Student protests over Gaza war are forcing Penn and other U.S. universities to face ‘impossible’ demands

And Villanova’s identity as a Catholic institution also is significant, she said, asserting that it is more conservative and not as prone to progressive activism.

Ak Asalu, 21, a junior criminology and political science major at Villanova, agreed that the potential sanctions played a role in students’ decision not to set up an encampment, but it was also that they decided they could accomplish the same thing with the sizable protest they held.

“There’s not really a culture of activism on campus,” he said. “So we knew that if the protest had a good turnout, we definitely would be able to get attention from the office of the president. We were able to get a meeting with the president to discuss our demands.”

Asalu said it was the right decision for students at Villanova.

“We really wanted to prioritize the safety of our students and we were still able to achieve what we wanted at the end of the day,” he said.

The president, the Rev. Peter M. Donohue, told students that Villanova does not have investments related to Israel and doesn’t invest in war efforts, Asalu said. Gust confirmed those assertions, noting that Villanova follows the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops guidelines on socially responsible investing, which restrict investments in weapons manufacturing.

Students still hope the university will put out a statement calling for a ceasefire and donate money to a Palestinian student relief fund, Asalu said.

The latest encampment movement really got its start at Columbia University last month and when the university used force to remove it, that fired up students at the nation’s other elite universities, who do tend to follow each other, said Timothy Burke, a history professor at Swarthmore.

“What that did is more or less lock in the idea of the encampment as the tactic of choice for students already poised to be in confrontation,” he said.

Students, he said, “are constructing their sense of a universe of peers,” he said.

And while elite colleges may nurture student activism, at some point when those schools’ operations are affected they may push back and tell students that’s enough, and that will only make students want to protest more, he said.

They will say, “I am just doing what you say you want people to do,” he said.

Some regional public universities and less-selective private schools also started encampments in part because the students there see themselves as peers to those at the elites, Burke said.

None of the 10 universities in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, including West Chester, has had an encampment, the system confirmed. Students at state universities may be struggling to hold down jobs, get through college in four years, and intend on remaining in the area after they graduate, Burke said.

They may not feel they can risk getting involved, he said.

West Chester spokesperson Nancy Santos Gainer shared the university’s rationale.

“We have been very open with our students that as a public institution, WCU is an advocate of free speech and the exchange of ideas in a civil manner,” she said. “We hope that our students know that through our actions of letting all sides of a debate be heard, WCU is an inclusive community and works actively to promote a culture of unity through meaningful and peaceful dialogue.”

Burke, the Swarthmore professor, acknowledged that the encampment, which is still in place, has caused some tension and unease.

“I’ll be very interested to see how the semester ends,” he said. “My personal hope is that the encampment is left alone and students make their own decision to say ‘OK, we’re done for now.’”