Four people were arrested Aug. 28 after a group tried to disrupt Festifall, the University of Michigan’s annual student organization fair.
None of those arrested are U-M students. Three are unaffiliated with the university and the fourth is a temporary employee.
Nearly 1,000 student groups set up tables on the Central Campus Diag for Festifall and an estimated 8,000 students walked through to learn about clubs and activities.
For more than an hour, a group of approximately 50 individuals lay on the Diag in an attempt to disrupt the event. They were given multiple warnings that they were blocking pedestrian traffic and violating university policy. They had come to the Diag to pressure the university to divest from companies linked to Israel.
Most eventually dispersed, although some refused to leave and, as a result, four people were arrested and taken into custody. All individuals arrested have been released, and charges are under review.
Go to the U-M Key Issues website for updates on this matter and to learn more about U-M policies related to disruptions.
Silke-Maria Weineck
„ For more than an hour, a group of approximately 50 individuals lay on the Diag in an attempt to disrupt the event“ is an extraordinary sentence.
Ted McTaggart
Shame on U of M for responding to peaceful protest with police repression.
Jesse Carr
I disagree with this account. Festifall was not disrupted. The police presence, whistles, bullhorns, sirens, etc., were disruptive and made things feel tense where prior it was just a peaceful protest. It’s also inaccurate to say those arrested were “unaffiliated.” They were alumni and community members. We are a public university.
Shea Court
This is an outright fabrication. The police disrupted the festifall foot traffic more than the protestors ever did. When the protestors began to leave the DIAG, the police charged and brutalized the activists. Two of those arrested were black, so clearly the University has a major issue with racism it needs to fix ASAP.
Brian Kobylarz
Applause to the University in taking control of a situation which only brings deep emotions to the surface. If there are 50 people laying on the ground during an activity in the middle of the activity, that defines disruptive. The police and the university leadership have knowledge and expertise with these matters, and I am confident they will continue to use that knowledge and expertise for the safety of all people.
Jennifer Sparks
The university’s response to these individuals protesting against ongoing genocide and settler colonialism (especially as an institution that purports to care about decolonization, and where faculty and staff frequently offer land acknowledgements) has been disgraceful.
I am a Jewish staff member and applaud these students, who take “never again” more seriously than any of us. University administration owes these students an apology at minimum, and should be called upon to openly identify and condemn the Palestinian genocide instead of supporting the false idea that Israeli aggression has anything to do with Jewish self-defense.
Judah Perillo
It is incorrect to describe the folks arrested as unaffiliated. UM is a public institution embedded into the local community and greatly affects the local community – the community includes these activists, who do in fact have UM affiliations otherwise. Any outside agitator narrative is a lie. As a Jewish staff member and alum, I applaud the bravery of these activists in the face of the university’s repression. The university investment in policing and surveilling the community is shameful. It would be easier – and surely cheaper – to divest from Israeli genocide.
Karthik Ganapathy
Even if the fabrications in this propaganda piece were true, protesting the university’s complicity in the genocide is a moral imperative.
To the UM employees fabricating this for the corrupt administration, I suggest watching the recent film that settles The Riefenstahl Question: https://www.theguardian.com/film/article/2024/aug/29/riefenstahl-review-deep-dive-study-takes-down-the-nazis-favourite-director
And reading the opinion of Craig Mokhiber on prosecuting Western “journalists” for their role in manufacturing consent for the ongoing genocide: https://mondoweiss.net/2024/08/western-media-can-be-held-legally-accountable-for-its-role-in-the-gaza-genocide/
Myles Zhang
The sit-in was one of the common forms of protest during the U.S. civil rights movement, employed by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and a generation of anti-apartheid and anti-war protestors. At the Greensboro sit-ins in 1960 and across the American South, hundreds of activists and college students occupied the private restaurants and public spaces of institutions that profited from apartheid. They refused to leave and continued to disrupt. The Greensboro protestors were spit on by pro-segregationists, arrested, brutalized by police and – most of all – accused of violating trespass laws and university policies. These laws were written (and are written) to defend the powerful from any kind of critique that weakens their power.
My anger is directed both to the police for slamming protestors to the ground before the eyes of hundreds of onlookers. My anger is equally directed to the staff and administrators from the Festifall tents, who first called the police on anti-war activists and stood by to just watch. I will remember the fact that you smiled as this happened, and a generation of students will remember your smiles.
At Martin Luther King Jr’s death in 1968, polls from researchers indicated that between 75 and 80 percent of Americans had a negative view of his work, particularly his opposition to the Vietnam War. In a few months, the University of Michigan will celebrate his life and his work with a public lecture and awards ceremony to people today who are doing (and continuing) the fight for civil rights. I encourage anti-war protestors to disrupt this event with a sit-in, and we will date the university police into arresting those who attend.
Our Board of Regents have money and violence. No power.
Myles Zhang
We will dare the university police into arresting those who attend.
Rebekah Modrak
SACUA Statement on Events at the Diag on August 28, 2024
We are alarmed and disheartened by the University administration’s aggressive response to peaceful protest on the Diag during Wednesday’s Festifall. Our mission as a public university obliges us to cultivate—not suppress—students’ ability to practice the arts of citizenship. This includes the right to protest.
Wednesday’s protestors were engaging in reasonable, meaningful actions that were meant to draw our attention to the ongoing tragedy in Gaza. In the observation of SACUA members and other faculty who were present at the protest, they were not impeding the movements of other students, and they were obedient to directives given by DPSS.
It was the aggressive tactics of the police—not the actions of the protesters—that resulted in confrontation. Four people were arrested by the police. One of them, a 16 year old, was hospitalized as a result of police tactics. At the time of the police action the protesters were peacefully parading through the campus, in a manner that is intrinsic in any protest.
The Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs deplores the aggressiveness with which DPSS responded to protestors who were peacefully practicing the skills of ‘democracy and debate’ (which is the theme of the academic year). We call upon President Ono and other responsible administrators to respect and encourage students’ capacity for meaningful political activism.
— Approved by SACUA on August 30, 2024
Charlotte Karem Albrecht
As a faculty member and a teacher committed to all my students, I am appalled by the actions of President Ono and the UM Regents (including rushing through the policies that apparently legitimized the police actions yesterday). Numerous accounts, including video, contradict this official statement about the protestors (led by students!) and the police arrests and treatment. Our UM leaders continue to use vague and disingenuous PR language to gild over their active repression of student activism and effectively imply that our students and their allies are criminals. Given that many of them are students of color, this is especially dangerous. This continues to be a dark period in UM’s history and a stain on it’s legacy. Shame on Ono and the Regents.
Sean Johnson
This is truly shameful behavior on the part of the university administration, DPSS, and the communications team. It will continue the trend of eroding free speech and protest rights, chilling what had been a healthy and vibrant campus environment into a shell of its former self. The only real disruption at Festifall came from the violent actions of the university and its police force.
Shanna Kattari they-them
Chiming in with my colleagues, as a Jewish faculty member at UM, as the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, and as someone whose remaining family mostly lives on a Kibbutz.
Collective action, protests, sit ins, and die ins have a long history in social work (my field), activism generally, and at UM specifically. While sometimes violent action is needed for change (our very country is founded through many such actions), this was not such an action. Lying on the ground to draw attention to an ongoing genocide is perhaps disruptive for people who are unaware of it, but the counter protestors (I notice none of whom were arrested) and police presence were far more disruptive.
My inbox has flooded from around the U.S. and indeed outside the country, with people shocked at what is happening at UM, friends and colleagues concerned for my safety, for the violation of the first amendment, all in reaction to the violence chosen by the UM administration. The violence that put two in the ER, I might note.
These folks were part of the UM community; alumni, a student on a gap year, etc. These community members speaking truth to power make me proud to be a Wolverine, while the action of the administration, the Festifall organizers who called the police, DPSS, AAPD, etc. make me ashamed to be connected to UM. Silencing those calling out injustice is not the way. Do better.
Basit Zafar
This is truly shameful. First, the aggressive police action against peaceful protesters on campus is unacceptable. Second, the official statement from the university, filled with falsehoods and misleading information, represents a new low even for this administration. Higher education is already under attack across the country, and these missteps by the administration only make it more difficult for us—academics and staff—to fulfill our mission of upholding the truth. The damage this administration is doing to this institution will be very hard to reverse.
Michael Atzmon
I join my colleagues in condemning the disgraceful handling of a peaceful protest. It was preceded by policy changes that eliminated basic due process for students, and is now being followed up with this piece of propaganda and misinformation. It is worth remembering that UM used to have true leadership at a time of great passions. In the 1960s, President Robben Fleming engaged in dialogue with students, even when they occupied a building. This was in stark contrast to other universities that chose to unleash the police on protesters. For those who choose to focus on the manners of peaceful protesters, I recommend thinking about the following quote from Fleming’s inauguration address in 1968: “It is often easier for critics of the present generation of students to fulminate against their bad manners, which are frequently displayed, than to accept the fact that underlying the bad manners may be a dedication to human well-being not found in their critics.”
Charles Schneider
Thank You U of M police for letting the students use the Diag. The protesters were not peaceful, they were disrupting people from enjoying the activities including just walking. I’m very grateful they shut the illegal protest down.
Naznin Mahmood
The university should be ashamed of its clandestine repression of students rights over the summer and this militarized aggression by police against peaceful protestors laying on the ground silently! The police made arrests and charges were brought with racial profiling on full blast. It’s very obvious. We will it stand for this!!
What is wrong with this university admin that you would rather move backwards in social justice to maintain investments in the war machine and settler colonialism in Palestine??
Laura Spitzfaden
I want to say that the recent and escalating repression of student voices is a break with the long tradition at the University of Michigan of supporting student activism. I want to say that the only violence experienced has been perpetrated by police, at the direction of administration, toward vulnerable young students and community members. I want to say these things but it is clear that the administration just doesn’t care.
University of Michigan, what do you care about? What is more important than the protection and education of all of the students? You are wasting time, money, and resources to violently oppress the voices that are telling us we are doing it wrong. Try listening to them instead.
University of Michigan wake up before it is too late. We are all complicit in an ongoing genocide. We should be doing something every single day to stop it. Wake up and follow your students’ lead. And stop trying to break our kids.
Thomas Valdez
In July 2024, the UN’s highest court ruled that Israel is committing apartheid against the Palestinian Territories.
I thought we all agreed that apartheid is bad. So, I guess my question and concern is, why is our school administration refusing to discuss divestment from an apartheid state?
Malik Mossa-Basha
Shame on the university to react so comments to peaceful protestors. Santa Ono is a disgrace to the university along with the regents.
Charles Schneider
Great job on shutting down the obstructive and illegal protest that was only intended to interfere with the students enjoying themselves and promoting school enthusiasm. I wish they would have done the same with the earlier “peaceful” protest that led to violence on campus and blockaded the diag for weeks.
Jordan Else
I continue to be disappointed at the University’s violent response to our students and community. Two of the students arrested were Black and one was a child. Our community is not safer with a violent police response being the answer. Our community is not safer when we demand students call 911 on each other.
Police violence against people lying on the ground is deplorable. These actions do not match our university’s stated values. The mission statement of out university is “to serve the people of Michigan and the world through preeminence in creating, communicating, preserving and applying knowledge, art, and academic values, and in developing leaders and citizens who will challenge the present and enrich the future.”
Now, we arrest students who challenge. We erase and don’t value their art. We condemn those speaking up whose families are directly affected by the ongoing violence in the middle east.
The University had the entire summer to work together with students to figure this out and it simply refused to. Shame on you, U of M.
Ono, you must meet with the students. We must show our community, our students, and our youth that we value community collaboration, student voice, and mediation over violence and police response. We must do better.
Charles Schneider
I continue to be impressed how the University handled the situation that was interfering with a scheduled student event on the Diag.
Tully Svekric
I don’t feel safe working at this University because of the administration’s disgusting actions, not because of the protesters. This is not the University I attended. I went to many events and demonstrations – many about the ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide the Palestinians have faced for most of the last century – and there was never a response like this. This is ideologically motivated and everyone at the University should feel ashamed for what the University is doing (and what it isn’t doing) to protect donor interests over student interests and what is ethical.
Marwa Hassan
Untruthful article. How shameful.
Marwa Hassan
The individuals who are commenting positively aren’t students and weren’t on the diag. They pretend to understand the oppression. Saying that the students disrupted a scheduled student event on the diag when there wasn’t one on the diag. Festifall is in the surrounding areas. The protest isn’t intended to interfere with students but bring awareness and encourage empathy in those lacking. Very deeply lacking. The protest is to acknowledge that no standing universities remain in Gaza while we all get the privilege to return to school and to our families. Those who can’t stop for a second and hear those voices haven’t needed to protest for their rights.