79 students and protesters were arrested Monday at the University of Texas at Austin after people set up a camp on campus to protest the Hamas-Israel war
According to the Austin American-Statesman, 78 of those arrested were charged with criminal trespass, while one person was charged with an additional of obstructing a highway or passageway. Another person was also charged with interfering with public duties.
According to preliminary reports, 46 of the people arrested in the protest were not students, though it is not clear whether the numbers included faculty or staff members.
On Monday afternoon, protesters formed a surprise encampment on the UT-Austin campus as a form of protest. Students stood in solidarity with other protesters at universities across the country, calling for a cease-fire and for their schools to end ties with Israeli arms manufacturers.
According to Georgina Bermudez, a senior biochemistry major at UT, police began pepper spraying protesters and arresting them without warning.
“Nobody was doing anything violent against police. We’re literally just standing there,” Bermudez said.
Last Wednesday, 57 people were arrested at another protest at UT-Austin. All of those arrested were charged with criminal trespass, but all of those charges were dropped because of deficiencies in the affidavits.
Attorneys for those arrested last Wednesday also said that last week’s affidavits were essentially “copied and pasted,” but this week’s affidavits will have more details, according to documents obtained by the Austin American-Statesman.
The Palestine Solidarity Committee, the organization that planned Wednesday’s protest, has planned at least two other protests on the UT campus this week, including one on Tuesday.
On Tuesday morning, more than 50 people gathered at the Travis County Jail to await the release of the protesters. They gathered with coffee, water and food to wait for their friends and family.
Since the April 18 protest at Columbia University in New York City, hundreds of students have been arrested across U.S. universities, including Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Southern California, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California State Polytechnic University, among others.
