Speaking strictly legally, Yale and any other private university have a non-trivial amount of authority to regulate the use of their own private spaces, and even ignoring that, the right to protest is not unlimited, particularly when it starts to impede the ability of others to conduct their own legal activities. Yale claims that the trespassing decision was made due to the protests blocking the ability of faculty and staff to access their facilities.
There’s also reports of one student being stabbed in the eye with a flag pole, and fundamentally, the Constitution does not give anyone the right to camp and protest on private land. Students were warned multiple times before police were finally moved in. Part of civil disobedience is accepting the consequences of said disobedience. Those arrested knew what would happen and chose accordingly. I won’t fault them for that.
You have the right to assembly, not the right to trespass anywhere you want at any time.
They could get a permit to protest on public grounds like parks, and would be protected by the law. But that doesn’t grab media attention, so they choose to be civilly unruly in their protests. It grabs attention far better, at greater risk to themselves.
Edit - downvoters, what exactly do you think I got wrong in the above statement?
Were you not alive during the BLM protests? They had plenty of permits and it didn’t stop cops from shooting out their eyes and kicking them out.
A permit means nothing now since nobody respects it from police to judges. There is no form of legal protest in public anymore. That’s why you’re being downvoted.
Not sure on the specifics of the Yale protest, but the Columbia protestors were protesting in the designated “free speech” protest area that campus has. They are students protesting exactly where the school told them to, they just don’t like the anti genocide message.
They are students protesting exactly where the school told them to
This article claims that the school asked them not to protest on campus because of complaints that there were threats of violence and intimidation targeting Jewish students.
I’m not here to argue what’s true or not, though. I have no idea.
The fact of the matter is that the college has the right to ask anyone to leave, and if you refuse, that is trespassing. Obviously, if the police arrested them, they were asked to leave and refused (barring oppressive police practices like surrounding them so they couldn’t leave, which has not been alleged by anyone in this case).
What happened to the right protest, constitutionalists?
Speaking strictly legally, Yale and any other private university have a non-trivial amount of authority to regulate the use of their own private spaces, and even ignoring that, the right to protest is not unlimited, particularly when it starts to impede the ability of others to conduct their own legal activities. Yale claims that the trespassing decision was made due to the protests blocking the ability of faculty and staff to access their facilities.
There’s also reports of one student being stabbed in the eye with a flag pole, and fundamentally, the Constitution does not give anyone the right to camp and protest on private land. Students were warned multiple times before police were finally moved in. Part of civil disobedience is accepting the consequences of said disobedience. Those arrested knew what would happen and chose accordingly. I won’t fault them for that.
You have the right to assembly, not the right to trespass anywhere you want at any time.
They could get a permit to protest on public grounds like parks, and would be protected by the law. But that doesn’t grab media attention, so they choose to be civilly unruly in their protests. It grabs attention far better, at greater risk to themselves.
Edit - downvoters, what exactly do you think I got wrong in the above statement?
Were you not alive during the BLM protests? They had plenty of permits and it didn’t stop cops from shooting out their eyes and kicking them out.
A permit means nothing now since nobody respects it from police to judges. There is no form of legal protest in public anymore. That’s why you’re being downvoted.
Not sure on the specifics of the Yale protest, but the Columbia protestors were protesting in the designated “free speech” protest area that campus has. They are students protesting exactly where the school told them to, they just don’t like the anti genocide message.
This article claims that the school asked them not to protest on campus because of complaints that there were threats of violence and intimidation targeting Jewish students.
I’m not here to argue what’s true or not, though. I have no idea.
The fact of the matter is that the college has the right to ask anyone to leave, and if you refuse, that is trespassing. Obviously, if the police arrested them, they were asked to leave and refused (barring oppressive police practices like surrounding them so they couldn’t leave, which has not been alleged by anyone in this case).