Pro-Palestinian Protests Block UC Santa Cruz Entrances, Pushing Classes Back Online

Updated 3:35 p.m. Wednesday

UC Santa Cruz moved classes online through Thursday after pro-Palestinian protesters blocked the campus’ two entrances, according to campus officials.

The Tuesday protests came the same day the university resumed in-person instruction after a week of remote instruction prompted by the academic workers’ strike that began May 20.

At about 1 p.m., access to the campus via its two entrances was blocked by several hundred pro-Palestinian protesters. The blockades prevented some people from coming and going until about 5 p.m., according to a statement from Chancellor Cynthia Larive sent to the campus community on Tuesday evening.

Larive called the blockades “an extremely dangerous effort to cause intentional harm.”

“Members of our community were unable to leave campus to pick up their children, to access medical care off campus, to show up to off-campus jobs, to leave campus after an early morning shift or to come onto campus for an afternoon or evening shift,” Larive continued in the statement.

Some people trying to get off campus attempted to drive around the protesters, which Larive said underscored the danger of the situation. Although the university defends free speech, Larive said blocking road access is not protected, and those who take part could face consequences.

Jess Fournier, the recording secretary for UAW 4811 at UC Santa Cruz, said the protesters blocking campus entrances were independent of the United Auto Workers Local 4811, the union representing University of California academic workers.

The campus’ 1,500 graduate teaching assistants, researchers and other academic workers were the first to walk off the job as part of the union’s rolling strike over the UC’s response to pro-Palestinian protests across its campuses. UCLA and UC Davis followed on Tuesday.

UC Santa Cruz will continue to hold classes remotely at least through Thursday.

“We were again required to make the decision of switching to remote instruction for [Wednesday] and Thursday so that we can provide our students, faculty and staff with as much clarity and predictability as possible,” Scott Hernandez-Jason, UC Santa Cruz’s assistant vice chancellor of communications and marketing, told KQED on Wednesday.