How Come This Campus Demonstration Was Shut Down?

Last weekend, the cops came onto the University of Massachusetts campus in Amherst, arrested 133 demonstrators and ended the encampment where the protestors had been sleeping for the last several weeks.

This particular protest had not created any great degree of difficulty in terms of verbal or physical confrontations, or class access, or any other problems which were reported on other campuses where anti-Gaza demonstrations have occurred over the past several months.

Furthermore, the U/Mass campus isn’t some small, enclosed space like the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University where any sizable gathering will be seen and noticed from just about every location on the campus site.

The Amherst campus of U/Mass is more than a mile in length and about a half mile in width. The area is set off from the town and between every building there are large swatches of open space and well-trimmed grass.

The Gaza tent city was spread out on the lawn in front of the student center and was therefore not blocking anyone — student, faculty, administrator — from conducting any business on the campus at all.

Furthermore, this campus is so large that someone could walk to many of the classroom and research locations, as well as the dormitories, and not even know that…