Protest Lives at Berkeley

By Matthew Kenney | Wednesday, May 29, 2002

On April 9 the UC Berkeley chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) staged a large and boisterous protest against the recent Israeli military incursions into the West Bank. One of the group's leaders, fifth-year graduate student Snehal Shingavi, helped to lead the protest and claimed that the protestors were using 'critical thinking tools' to bring attention the recent trouble in the Middle East. The administration warned the SJP prior to the planned protest that it was under no circumstances to seize control of any campus building, and that, if it did, the administration would take severe disciplinary action. The SJP ignored the threat, and instead ended their protest with a four-hour takeover of Wheeler Hall, a prominent academic building, causing disruptions for hundreds of students attempting to take exams. The administration followed through with their previous statements, and police were summoned to deal with the protestors. Seventy-nine protesters, forty-one of which were students, were arrested. All seventy-nine were charged with unlawful occupation, which carries the possibility of a ninety-day jail sentence, seven were charged with resisting arrest, and one student was charged with assaulting a police officer (he bit the officer). Also, Berkeley administration barred the Students for Justice in Palestine from organizing on campus and seeks to suspend the forty-one students for a year.

The arrested students say their right to free speech has been violated. Their attorney, Osha Neumann, is 'asking the [District Attorney] to drop all the charges.' Neumann said, 'What [the protestors] did was in fact a service to the community.' Neumann also felt that the arrests were a direct attack on the free speech movement, which made the campus famous during the Sixties.

An arrested graduate student, Raymond Costantino, said that the administration is simply attempting to squash dissent on campus, calling the charges against him 'appalling.' Snehal Shingavi further claims that the administration is seeking to silence the voice of Palestinians on campus.

Many Berkeley students do not share Costantino's opinion. Sonny Kohli, a freshman and security officer on campus, said, '[The protestors] went to far in occupying one of our biggest lecture halls.' Matthew Spence, a sophomore, said, 'I personally think that a building seizure is okay, as long as the building is not an academic one,' and felt that the question of building seizure did not seem to be the issue, as other buildings have been seized as recently as 1998 and 2001. Students for Justice in Palestine had, in fact, seized a building with no administrative reprimand only a few weeks before the April 9 incident. The difference, according to Spence, was that 'the protestors were warned' beforehand not to seize any buildings, and as 'most of us here are just concerned about getting an education,' Berkeley this behavior unacceptable. Kohli also felt that 'suspending students for a year... is way too harsh,' with the exception of the protestor who bit an officer and is being charged with assault, who 'deserves whatever they do to him.'

Students for Justice in Palestine leaders have done more than simply voice complaints that their rights have been violated. Since the arrests the group has, in fact, been quite active on campus. SJP ignored the sanctions imposed on it and has been running a table on Sproul Plaza, a major thoroughfare, inciting the Student Judicial Affairs Office to threaten additional sanctions. A flyer e-mailed to a large list was distributed around campus attempting to incite a response to the arrest of the students.

The flyer informs students that they have two options in this matter: 'You have a choice today: say what you think is right' or 'Let Chancellor Berdahl speak for you to try to force 41 students out of school and into jail.' The flyer then explains the nature of the protest and then asks students:

1. I support students demonstrating for what they believe.
2. My education experience was not disrupted by the sit-in on April 9.
3. I was inconvenienced but I don't feel that fellow students should be suspended from school or sentenced to jail.
4. I am willing to be a witness for the defense.

None of the choices offer options for students who did not support the protest. Additionally, rallies have been held to try to force the administration to back away from suspending the forty-one students. The arguments used in these rallies are not always of the most eloquent sort, however. In FrontPage magazine, Rory Miller wrote, 'Hatem Bazian, a lecturer in the Middle East Studies department and member of Students for Justice in Palestine stated, to the approval of the crowd [at a rally], 'If you want to know where the pressure on the university [i.e., to prosecute the trespassers who were arrested] is coming from, look at the Jewish names on the school buildings.''

For Snehal Shingavi, courting bad press and controversy is nothing new. At an event billed as a 'memorial vigil' just days after September 11, Snehal Shingavi extolled the Arab terrorists for making the 'first blow against American capitalism,' and wished that President Bush had been in the towers. He then to booed and laughed at students who called for a military response or expressed grief over friends whom they had lost in the attacks. Last October, a student claims that he saw Snehal and another student steal an entire press run of 23,000 issues of The Daily California. This student claims to be an eyewitness to this crime and took photographs of theft. The photographs, however, were 'conveniently lost' when he handed in the film as evidence. Following the most recent building seizure, reports have claimed that Shingavi was the author of the flyer calling for support for the arrested students.

More recently, Shingavi decided to teach a class entitled: 'The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance,' with a caveat in the course description stating, 'Conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections.' This blatant bias incited a national uproar, which led to the removal of the anti-conservative caveat, but the class apparently will still be taught next semester.

It seems the radical nature of the recent protest that ended in so many arrests is not, in fact, an isolated incident, but part of a pattern of extremism on campus. The charge of free speech violation also seems to be quite vacuous. UC Berkeley Dean of Students Karen Kenney certainly claims that the university has no intention of muffling free speech, and that it is 'a cherished tradition' on the campus.

'There are protests all the time...today we had an open mic on Sproul Plaza...and some people got up and said political things, but generally people played guitars or sang,' said Matthew Spence.

Protest Lives at Berkeley

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