Florida college students join national wave of pro-Palestinian rallies

Students at some of Florida’s public universities have joined the wave of pro-Palestinian demonstrations sweeping the nation over the last week, but their protests so far have been smaller, quieter and without the forceful police presence seen at many other campuses.

At the University of Florida, a protest that turned a portion of the Plaza of the Americas into a small, grassy “liberation zone” ended its third day late Friday with no arrests, drawing about 100 students at its peak.

On Landis Green at Florida State University, students set up with posters and tents at 4 a.m. Thursday. By the afternoon, however, the tents came down while about 30 student protesters remained.

Joelle Nuñez, president of the Tallahassee Students for a Democratic Society group, said law enforcement told them to relocate. Sprinklers went off at one point, dousing the group. They continued their protest on Friday with no major incidents and plan to resume Monday.

Students at the University of Central Florida also held a rally on Friday, with about 200 people participating, no arrests and an escort by police on bicycles. A protest is planned on Monday at the University of South Florida.

Mateo Herrera, co-chairperson of UCF’s Young Democratic Socialists of America, said student activity in Florida is just beginning.

“We know the climate in Florida,” he said. “We know if we escalate more, we’ll face more repression than what is happening up north. … This experience shows how much universities care about their students and their priorities of who they get their money from.”

The Florida students, like their peers in other states, are demanding that their schools cut financial ties with corporations that support Israel and its war effort in Gaza, where more than 34,000 civilians have been killed and food is scarce, according to local health officials.

The UF protesters had several additional demands, including that the university sever partnerships with weapons, arms and artificial intelligence contractors involved in human rights violations. They also want UF to agree not to host speakers affiliated with the Israeli military or those who “spread misinformation about the history of Palestine.”

The students want to stop tuition dollars from indirectly financing the war, said Cameron Driggers, a UF freshman who called the protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza “the landmark social movement of our time.”

“I wouldn’t be comfortable doing nothing,” he said, noting that some of the protesters are Jewish students. “I want to be able to tell my kids and my family in the future that I tried to do my best to stop what I would call a genocide that’s happening right now in Palestine.”

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Since last week, hundreds of protesters have been arrested at campuses, including Columbia University in New York City, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin, Emerson College in Boston and Emory University in Atlanta. The University of Southern California canceled its graduation, and Columbia temporarily moved classes online.

The New York Times reported that more than 400 people have been arrested in campus protests since April 17, and it published a map showing more than 60 protest sites across the nation. Many of them involve encampments with students staking out patches of campus ground in tents.

The demonstrations are happening just days before the end of the spring semester, with commencement celebrations scheduled for early May.

Gov. Ron DeSantis sought to set the tone for Florida schools with a post Thursday on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

He said college leaders in the Northeast had been “weak” in their response to protesters he described as “mobs” that “harass Jewish students and faculty.”

“If you try that at a Florida university, you are going to be expelled,” the governor wrote.

At UF on Thursday night, campus police handed out notices listing rules for the protesters and warning them that violators would be suspended and banned from campus for three years. The ACLU of Florida responded Friday with a strong rebuke.

“We urge campus administrators and law enforcement to exercise restraint in interfering with student demonstrations and encampments and remain firm in their commitment to free speech, open debate, and peaceful dissent on campus,” Howard Simon, the group’s executive director, said in a statement. “The principles on which this country was founded demand no less.”

Florida’s demonstrations are happening on campuses with some of the largest populations of Jewish students in the nation. In Hillel International’s 2020 list of the “Top 60 Jewish schools,” the University of Florida was No. 1 with about 6,500 Jewish undergraduates and nearly 3,000 Jewish graduate students.

UCF was No. 3 and FSU, along with Florida International University, were in the top 20.

Driggers said he believed student sentiment on Florida’s college campuses largely favored a cease-fire in the Middle East and support for Palestinians.

“But of course we have to keep in mind that the consequences for our organizing is even more punished because you have people like Ron DeSantis, who have implemented various ways of cracking down,” he said. “We’ve heard elected leaders saying that we should be expelled and arrested just for exercising our freedom of speech, which I think is a little ironic. These people are typically your free speech absolutists, right?”

Through the day Thursday, the UF protesters sat on blankets, doing schoolwork and holding signs and flags. Campus police walked by telling them they couldn’t plant signs or flags into the ground. The group picked them up.

A sign initially tied to the ground by rope was refashioned so it would not be considered a structure. Photos of Palestinians who have died in Gaza lined the perimeter. By Friday afternoon, the signs were gone, but protesters sat in the plaza.

Some passersby expressed disapproval. One called them members of Hamas, a protester said. Some took photos and nodded in support. Most didn’t engage with the group.

Two Jewish students who walked by as many protesters left Thursday night said they were upset by the demonstration.

Max Kilman, an Israeli-American student, called the group a “loud minority” and was troubled by chants calling for an intifada, referring to the Palestinian uprising against Israel.

“It’s pretty disturbing,” he said. “While I recognize that this is not nearly as bad as what has happened at certain places like Columbia … I think it should be known that this does not represent the sentiment or the spirit (of UF).”

Isaac Pines said he felt the protests further divided students.

“I think there is a middle ground to it, but the way that they’re approaching it makes it seem like it’s such a polarizing issue,” he said. “If you were really trying to make progress here, you’d want to work with pro-Israel students on campus.”

In a statement, UF spokesperson Cynthia Roldan said, “The University of Florida will always protect speech and uphold the law. Peaceful protests are constitutionally protected.”

She said that “camping, putting up structures, disrupting academic activity, or threatening others on university property is strictly prohibited” and that officials “clearly communicated this” to the students. She said anyone who breaks the law will receive “an immediate trespassing order from (campus police) and an interim suspension” from UF’s Division of Student Life.

Some protesters expressed frustration that a few of the regulations seemed open to interpretation. Sleeping and anything deemed to be a structure was prohibited, but occupying spaces while awake was not.

In Tallahassee, Nuñez, the student protest leader at FSU, said the group was trying to avoid arrests but expected to be on campus as long as they could be.

He said they wanted to place more emphasis on their message.

“I want people to focus not just on the repression, but why these students are out there in the first place,” Nuñez said. “This wouldn’t be happening if these institutions weren’t supporting Israel.”

Amy Farnum-Patronis, a spokesperson for FSU, said the group was not affiliated with the university and was asked to leave because of the school’s regulations against camping.

“No criminal activity or conduct has been observed, but law enforcement is on scene and actively monitoring the situation,” she said. “As an educational institution, Florida State University welcomes free inquiry, diverse thought and rigorous debate. However, these expressions must comply with university regulation and the law.”

This report contains information from Times staff writer Romy Ellenbogen and The Associated Press.

Divya Kumar covers higher education for the Tampa Bay Times, working in partnership with Open Campus.