Graduation ceremonies are underway this weekend at universities across the country, including some that have been roiled by pro-Palestinian protests and police clashes. At the University of Southern California, Los Angeles police pushed some protesters off campus early Sunday and locked a gate afterward, according to student newspaper the Daily Trojan. Police also assisted university public safety officers in clearing a protest encampment, USC said later in the day.
Early Sunday, at least 50 Los Angeles police officers moved through the USC campus and surrounded Alumni Park, where they issued a dispersal order to a pro-Palestinian encampment, the Daily Trojan reported. The university’s senior vice president of communications, Joel Curran, said later in the day that it was 75 to 100 Los Angeles Police Department and university officers, with the university ones issuing the dispersal order. Some protesters left the area, while a university alert warned students that anyone not leaving “could be arrested.”
At a nearby campus gate, some police pushed a group of protesters off campus and locked the gate, the Daily Trojan reported. The university said its officers were also involved. Officers also disassembled tents and largely cleared the encampment. The LAPD said it was there “to support” university officers, and that no arrests were made.
About 6:30 a.m. Pacific time, the university said in a message on X that its University Park campus, one of its two main campuses, had been cleared. “The campus remains closed,” it said.
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USC President Carol L. Folt said in a statement that the university in recent weeks “exercised patience and restraint as we worked to de-escalate a volatile situation,” but that it was time to “draw a line” after the protest “was spiraling in a dangerous direction over the last several days.”
“Residence halls, campus throughfares, and libraries had become places of confrontation,” she wrote. “Some finals were disrupted with noise and chanting during mandated quiet periods. Yesterday afternoon, outside agitators jumped the perimeter fencing and assaulted our officers.”
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Graduation ceremonies are being held Sunday at campuses including Ohio State University and Northeastern University in Boston. USC’s commencement week is scheduled to begin Wednesday, though the school has canceled its main speakers. Schools continue to grapple with balancing students’ free speech rights and maintaining an amicable atmosphere as thousands of graduating students and their families celebrate this weekend.
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On Saturday, roughly 75 student protesters marched through the University of Michigan’s commencement ceremony held at Michigan Stadium. The group began protesting at the start of the program and walked up the main aisle as they chanted, the university said in a statement. Public safety personnel moved them toward the back of the stadium, where they remained free to protest throughout the program. No arrests were made.
Share this articleShareThe University of Florida has held commencement ceremonies at two-thirds of its 17 colleges and has not experienced disruptions, university president Ben Sasse, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. The university is holding three more ceremonies Sunday, he said. Sasse called himself a “First Amendment zealot” who will always defend students’ rights to free speech and assembly. But university rules mean “you don’t get to take over the whole university. People don’t get to spit at cops. You don’t get to barricade yourselves in buildings. You don’t get to disrupt somebody else’s commencement,” he said, adding that camping on campus is also prohibited. Leaders of some other universities “need to step up and mind their own shops more,” Sasse said.
New York Mayor Eric Adams was asked on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday whether colleges in the city will be able to hold peaceful in-person graduation ceremonies. “I believe they should,” Adams (D) replied. “It’s a wonderful experience to graduate from an institution. If the institutions decide to graduate their students and celebrate a beautiful experience with their families, we’ll make sure it’s done in a peaceful manner.”
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More than 2,300 people have been arrested on campuses nationwide over the past two weeks, according to a count kept by The Washington Post.
At the University of Virginia on Saturday, authorities arrested 25 pro-Palestinian demonstrators during a sustained confrontation, university officials said, after dozens of law enforcement officers in riot gear surrounded a student encampment and used pepper spray to disperse people from the area.
Several colleges and universities are negotiating deals with students to try to defuse tensions peacefully and avert further violence. Thus far, Rutgers, Northwestern, Brown, the University of Minnesota and the University of California at Riverside are some of the colleges that have struck deals. Students have been calling for universities to divest from Israel.
Susan Svrgula, Patrick Svitek, Ruby Cramer and Marianna Sotomayor contributed reporting.
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