Students Arrested During Protest May Be Suspended

The 41 students arrested during the siege of Wheeler Hall on the UC Berkeley campus earlier this month may face suspension for up to a year as campus administrators vow to crack down on what they call violations of the university's "core mission."

In an effort to preserve "the right of other students to an education," campus administrators also disbanded the student group in charge of the April 9 protest, the Berkeley chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.

The group protested Israeli aggression against Palestinians on Sproul Plaza before storming Wheeler Hall a short distance away and occupying it for four hours.

The group seized the same building last year and locked the dozen or so entrances to it with chains and padlocks. That time they also stayed in the building chanting for

several hours.

"The interruption of academic activities (is) a serious problem," UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Berdahl said yesterday. "(SJP's) occupation of Wheeler seriously compromised (students') ability to take exams."

UC Berkeley administrators had gathered information that led them to believe the protesters would try to seize a building, though they suspected it would be Moffitt Undergraduate Library.

In anticipation of their attempt to take over a building, a form of civil disobedience familiar to the campus, two days before the protest Berdahl imposed strict penalties for sieges on academic buildings. Assistant Chancellor John Cummins said Students for Justice in Palestine knew "well in advance" that its members could face suspension from the university for disrupting classes.

But Snehal Shingavi, a leader of Students for Justice in Palestine, said the university was specifically targeting his group so Palestinians would not have a voice on campus.

Though the student group has been banned, the group's members can join other groups or register a new student group with the Office of Student Life. Shingavi's International Student Organization has already applied for a demonstration permit from the university for May.

But the Students for Justice in Palestine can no longer organize on campus, and that worries Shingavi, he said.

"The things taken away (by the suspension) are not an abstract consequence," he said. "It goes to the core of organizing and our ability to come together. It goes to the core of silencing the students of Palestine."

The cases against the 41 arrested students are pending. In a letter to concerned members of the group, Cummins explained that the students will have student conduct hearings and recommendations for punishments will be made to the dean of students, the ultimate arbiter in the cases. The dean could then choose to suspend the students or exonerate them.

"(The) suspension is unjust and unprecedented," said Student Advocate Alex Kipnis, who will represent the students in the university's cases against them."There have been sit-ins and other forms of protest before, and the university never said anything about suspension."

In the past few years, protesters have seized Barrows Hall and Sproul Hall, but neither building houses a major lecture hall like Wheeler.

University spokesperson Marie Felde said the takeover of Barrows Hall in 1998 during protests against cuts to the ethnic studies program did not warrant suspension because the protest was "well away from the (building's) classrooms."

Administration officials could not warn students of the possibility of suspensions during last year's occupation of Wheeler because the university "had no prior knowledge of it," Cummins said.

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