To the editor: Protesters complain that their participation in campus demonstrations last spring is now hampering their academic progress and burdening them with red tape and inconvenience.
But what about the effects their protests and encampments had on students, teachers and staff whose classes went remote, whose exams were delayed and whose research was interrupted or halted? What about the staff left to carry out the enormous task of cleaning up and restoring destroyed and vandalized buildings and spaces?
As the anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre approaches and the new academic year gets underway, students resentful that campus codes of conduct apply to them might wonder what their encampments, takeovers, checkpoints, defacements, closures and often humiliating intimidation have accomplished.
Only 8% of young voters recently polled by NBC cited the war between Hamas and Israel as a top concern. Hamas just executed six hostages (one of them an American citizen) and continues to reject all ceasefire proposals. And universities are not divesting from Israel.
Jo Perry, City of Study
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To the editor: As a graduate of USC and UCLA, I am appalled by the severity of the consequences USC is imposing on some of its students who protested the mass killing of civilians in the Gaza Strip.
Students should be encouraged to speak out when they see blatant injustice being committed. Their cause is legitimate and it is impossible to be proud of an institution that punishes their actions, as if students should simply submit to the accepted “collective thinking” on an issue.
UCLA also lost face when it utterly failed to protect peacefully protesting students when counter-protesters violently attacked them. Both universities can, and should, do much better.
Bill Hessell, View of the Oak
