'It feels like a fortress.' California students return to college amid tighter security over protests

When Lawrence Sung returned to USC this week, he encountered a campus starkly different from the one he's come to know over the last three years.

In place of open gates for public access, students lined up, waiting for staff to scan their IDs. Once inside, new signs warned of a possible "secondary verification screening" and that bags and personal items would be
"subject to inspection.”

Tall, black fencing cordoned off parts of Alumni Park, the heart of campus and site of the spring's pro-Palestinian encampments . Students are allowed to enter the park, where they typically rest beneath shade trees, only through specified entries and exits.

“It’s overblown,” said Sung, a senior studying international relations and global business who never himself protested. "It feels like a fortress closing itself down to the community."

Last academic year, college campuses throughout the nation were roiled and divided by dueling rallies between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups, accusations of antisemitic and anti-Palestinian bias and tensions over an anti-war movement pushing for divestment from Israel. Presidents struggled with how to respond to a slew of fortified protest encampments, many that ended only after police were called in to make arrests — numbering in the thousands across the country.

Now administrations are clamping down ahead of a potentially volatile fall of continued protests opposing the Israel-Hamas war, compounded by a divisive presidential election.

"They gave us one big task: Keep the protesters out,” said a worker manning check-in on a recent day at USC, which is also installing a permanent gate at McClintock Avenue, a main campus entrance. "That’s our main job,” said the staffer, who did not give his name because he was not authorized to speak to journalists.

Across California colleges and universities — including the 10-campus University of California and 23-campus California State University systems — administrators say they will strictly enforce codes of conduct: There will be zero tolerance for encampments and violations of protest policies, rules that were unevenly enforced at many institutions.

That's not all.

More campus safety officers

At Pomona College, which began classes Monday, a rule prohibits anyone without a campus ID from accessing buildings year-round — something that previously applied only in the summer. Campus safety officers have been positioned at Alexander Hall, the administrative building where police arrested pro-Palestinian students occupying the president's office last year, to control who can enter.

A campuswide message recently warned students that erecting encampments — such as the one on the commencement stage in May that led Pomona to move its graduation to the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles — could lead to "detention and arrest by law enforcement."

The college has also hired new campus safety officers — one sergeant and four officers — solely to patrol Pomona. They're in addition to the more than 30 campus safety workers and officers who are shared among the Claremont Colleges, a consortium of five undergraduate and two graduate colleges including Pomona.

Student activists feel singled out.

"They'll happily arrest you again," said a recent Instagram post by Pomona Divest from Apartheid, a pro-Palestinian group. "They're lashing out because it's working," the post said, referring to the organization's protests. The group has already taken part of several protests, including one where keffiyeh-clad students walked out of back-to-campus dinners at the dean of students' home and a "rally against repression" outside the convocation ceremony Tuesday.

Protests to begin

A test will come Thursday, when Bay Area students at UC Berkeley, San Jose State University, San Francisco State University and the University of San Francisco plan to hold coordinated protests on their campuses.

For students, who have unsuccessfully pushed for administrations to divest from weapons companies connected to Israel, the effort will focus on trying to bring back crowds as large as those in spring. For administrators, these first protests will test their avowed zero tolerance of encampments — if they are erected — or, in the case of UC, rules that ban using face masks to conceal one's identity and prohibit blocking pathways to buildings.

Protests unfolded at USC last week when students rallied outside of the Coliseum during convocation. The event typically is held in Alumni Park but was moved to the stadium, where security procedures included a clear-bag policy and metal detectors.

About 9,100 students, parents, faculty and staff attended the celebration. Outside, students held signs that said "USC funds genocide" and "long live the student intifada." About two dozen activists, many of whom were part of the spring encampment, turned out — a smaller crowd than the hundreds that protested in the spring.

Many of the largest schools — including all UC campuses except Berkeley and Merced — still have weeks to go before the fall quarter opens in late September. That includes UCLA, where police arrested 206 protesters while clearing an encampment on May 2, two days after a violent mob attacked pro-Palestinian activists amid a delayed law enforcement response. The melee led to the removal of UCLA's police chief and the creation of a campus safety office .

In addition to orders from UC President Michael Drake to strictly follow protest policies, UCLA is under a court order over how it handles pro-Palestinian protests.

The university was sued by three Jewish students who alleged administrators failed to protect their right to equal campus access during spring protests. In the suit, students accused UCLA of knowingly tolerating an encampment that they said prevented pro-Israel Jews from crossing through. This month, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction ordering UCLA "not to aid or participate in any obstruction of access for Jewish students" to campus.

The university, plaintiffs and student and faculty activists have disagreed on whether such discrimination took place, although UCLA dropped an appeal of the injunction and said it will abide by the order while the case proceeds in court.

UC is also facing a new challenge from UAW 4811, the union representing 48,000 academic workers across its campuses. The union is demanding UC meet to bargain over its "unilateral change" to protest policies. The ban on camping is not new. The ban on covering one's face with the intent to conceal identity while committing a crime is a state law that has been publicly displayed on signs at some campuses. Under the directive, all UC campuses have added it to campus rules.

Debate over antisemitism

The Jewish Faculty Resilience Group, an official faculty association at UCLA, has praised the Drake directive.

The university system "must ensure that all people — regardless of religion, nationality or beliefs and other categories protected by law, including Jews and Zionists, must be able to work, learn and live on campus free from exclusion, discrimination and intimidation," the group said in a statement.

However, Benjamin Kersten, a UCLA doctoral student who was part of the encampment, said the restrictions make him upset.

"The idea of Jewish safety is once again being deployed to enact policies that invite greater police presence, which is part of what exposed me and many of my peers to violence and now also to risk public health," said Kersten, who is active in Jewish Voice for Peace, a pro-Palestinian Jewish organization, and studies art history.

"The university is taking an authoritarian response to political dissent. ... We need more just and democratic investment practices. That's what's at the crux of this and this is how the university is responding."

Tensions continue at USC

Similar debates have taken places at USC, where pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian movements have clashed in side-by-side protests and verbal altercations since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and Israel's ongoing war in Gaza.

Tensions grew after the university pulled a commencement speaking slot from Asna Tabassum , a valedictorian who pro-Israel groups accused of antisemitism based on a pro-Palestinian link in her Instagram profile.

USC, which cited unnamed security concerns, later canceled the university-wide commencement entirely and installed fencing and metal detectors around campus during dozens of smaller graduation events.

For those who were at USC at that time, the current security measures feel softer.

"It's actually easier to get into USC now than it was in the spring," said Yoav Gillath, a senior who is earning an undergraduate degree in political economy and a masters in business analytics.

Gillath, who is Jewish and active in USC Hillel, said he hoped USC would make sure any new rules were "applied predictably, fairly and equitably to people across the board, no matter what side of the issue they are on."

Regarding safety, Gillath — who didn't take part in protests — said he already "felt very safe" last year during spring demonstrations on campus.

As for the new ID check-in, students said the first few days went smoothly, with few jams to get in via foot or car. Express lanes for people with USC IDs who didn't have a bag to check sped up the process.

Sung, the USC senior, said entering campus "was very smooth and quick."

Still, he said, he continues to feel the measures are "too much."

Times Staff writer Teresa Watanabe contributed to this story.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times .