Indiana University

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Introduction

This page will contain various bits of information on the April 25 incident at IU.

Demonstration and Arrests of April 25, 2024

Major Sources

Personal Observations

  • At the 10am rally in front of the administration building, I heard a good story. A woman professor was arrested and kept at the jail till about midnight, so about 9 hours. She was with a female student. The student's mother came to pick her up from jail. It turned out, the mother had been in the professor's class, a generation before! And that the professor had actually held that student in her arms, when she was a baby.
I also heard that some of the students in jail were very scared, some weren't. I heard one story that someone had just been picking up some belonging of his girlfriend from a collapsed tent, and they arrested him. Some were charged with trespass, some with resisting the police. Some were trying to defend the tents, but others were arrested too, it seems. Before the state police with automatic weapons showed up, someone from the university said that university policy meant the demonstrators had to leave. The demonstrators said the rules allowed them to be there. "I've done my research," said the official (a policeman?I don't know). "Then what's the policy?" said a demonstrator. The official couldn't answer.
I arrived late at the 10 a.m. faculty-led rally, having been busy trying to let state officials know what was going on, since I'm about the only Republican at the university (well, there are a dozen of us). They have recorded it, an organizer told me. At 11, people marched over to Dunn Meadow, for the student-organized rally. To my dismay, by the time we got there the organizers were already starting loud Palestine chants, and it looked like it was going to be just another pro-Hamas rally. I asked an organizer of the faculty rally if he'd like me to speak as a conservative supportive of free speech and hostile to Hamas. He said this was the student show and he was uninvolved. He also said, "Don't you think that might be inflammatory?", since I hd my MAGA hat with me. I like to get unlikely people to work together, so that was kinda the point, but it wasn't my show either, so I left.
  • Summary.
   It appears some pro-Hamas students were planning to erect a tent village in imitation of those at Columbia, MIT, etc. They  set up their rather small number of tents around noon, April 25, Thursday. Pro-Israel students demonstrated across the street (not much smaller a number, I think).  IU called in the state police and had  police dressed as soldiers, reportedly with submachine guns and helmets, to help the campus cops, and even had a sniper on the roof of the Memorial Union.  They told the students to take down their tents; the students refused; the police arrested about 20, including 2 or 3 faculty and took them away on a bus, and the university banned them from campus for a year.
   The blunder was this: THE STUDENTS HAD NOT YET DONE ANYTHING WRONG. If Pres. Whitten had waited till 11pm, the students would have broken the rule against having "structures" up between 11pm and 6 am  on Dunn Meadow (as best as I can tell, that's a rule, and it's a reasonable policy). But it wasn't 11pm yet. Dunn Meadow is a designated location for protests, and putting a tent or sunshade pavilion there isn't against the rules. 
   There were two compounding blunders. First, Pres. Whitten claims it was against the rules because she set up a 4-person committee of administration officials the day before who invented a new rule. Sorry, but that's not how university rules are made, and it won't  stand up in court ieither. Second, she called in the state police. But this wasn't a riot, or anything near it. It was more like fat girls saying they wouldn't let the police tear down their tents. It was overkill, it looked bad, and it must have cost a lot of money to bring in special police.  And if the University gets sued for civil rights violation, actual damages paid out will be trivial, but I think the statute awards legal fees, which would be big, and the loss will be embarassing. 
    I might be wrong in particulars, so be careful. But this is what it looks like.  
  I should add that in general, I myself am very much in favor of police tearing down tent villages, arresting people, and expelling students. And I am extremely pro-Israel, anti-Hamas. But you need to wait till rules are broken to arrest people.

Possibly Useful Information


April 29

      "It has sometimes felt as if we have received nothing but time-consuming distractions and repeated blows to our sense of the institution’s near and long-term stability, although I am willing to admit that this may just be my sheer exhausting talking. Be that as it may, however, I am nevertheless convinced that the time has come for the Whitten administration to end."

April 28

April 27 Stories

  • The Bloomington mayor's video. She is blaming outside agitators, just like a 19560's southern sheriff, without any evidence whatsoever of any outsiders being involved. But our mayor is a 2010's leftwing radical, albeit one in the pocket of the real estate developers, so this is very odd for those of us who know a little history.

April 26 Stories

 "The President and Provost state that their action involved the need “to balance our commitment to free speech activities with the need to ensure safety and security.” Nowhere is there any indication of how the presence of tents—whether conforming with existing policy or even of ultimately violating it by remaining overnight—endangered the safety and security of the campus, much less required the stationing of snipers on the IMU roof."
  • The Daily Student's hour-by-hour coverage of the day up at 1.a.m. The tents are back and they intend to stay many more days.

April 25 stories

  • WRTV, "leads to the arrest of 33 people".
  • tweet from @iuonstrike complaining about the Chabad House loud music across from the Palestian protest on Dunn Meadow.

Other Universities

 Thursday morning, the university learned that a group of protesters had established an encampment, calling for MSU to divest from Israel. MSU Department of Police and Public Safety engaged in peaceful discussions with the leaders of the group, informing them that the setting up of tents violates MSU Ordinance 13, which prohibits camping on university property. The group was reminded that they were free to continue their protest without the tents and were made aware that they could apply for a permit to allow the tents.
  Shortly thereafter, I visited the site and spoke with the individuals at the encampment, as did SVP Vennie Gore, VP Laura Rugless and other members of the SLE team, underscoring our commitment to dialogue and understanding among all community members. Outreach also has been made to our Jewish leaders and organizations on campus who we know are impacted by the presence of the protest.
   After consultation with members of my leadership team and Board of Trustees Chair Dan Kelly, the permit request to allow tents was granted through Sunday.

  “Peaceful protests within our rules are acceptable. Breaking our rules and policies and disrupting others’ ability to learn are not allowed. The group that led this protest stated it was going to violate Institutional Rules. Our rules matter, and they will be enforced. Our University will not be occupied,” wrote president Jay Hartzell in a statement Wednesday night.
   FIRE said on April 25 in a good memo that they students were not breaking any rules, and the Administration response was illegal under Texas law:
    "These foundational free speech principles are also enshrined in Texas state law,17 as well as in

UT Austin policy.18 Texas law is clear: Outdoor common areas on state university campuses are traditional public forums open for “any person to engage in expressive activities in those areas of the institution’s campus freely[.]” 19 Students, faculty, and members of the public therefore have the right to peacefully protest at UT Austin without regard to the views they wish to express. 20"

17 The FIRE footnotes are to: Tex. Educ. Code § 51.9315 Protected Expression on Campus,

18 The University of Texas Austin, Why can members of the public come to campus at any time and engage in demonstrations and speeches?, YOU TUBE (Oct. 15, 2023), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCFxvdhFjPo. 19,20 Tex. Educ. Code § 51.9315.

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