For six days in early May 2024 — in the midst of the largest student uprising in the United States since the Vietnam War — UC San Diego students joined their peers across the country and set up and occupied a protest camp. The protestors were there to demand an end to national and University financial support for Israel, whose genocide of Palestinians was entering its eighth month, and which had, by then, claimed upward of 40,000 civilian lives.
At its height, several hundred protesters were in the encampment, composed mostly of students, but also including faculty and members of the community. Though the cause that brought them together was a serious one, the mood inside the camp was peaceful, even joyful, as protesters danced Palestinian folk dances and Jewish students celebrated Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest.
It all came to an end in the early hours of May 6, when police in riot gear descended on the encampment. Summoned by UCSD administration, the heavily-armed officers of the San Diego Police Department, the San Diego Sheriff’s Office, the University of California Police, and the California Highway Patrol, swept through the encampment, demolished it, and arrested 64 protesters, detaining them in Price Center before hauling them away on buses to local jails. Students gathered, attempting to stop the arrestees from being taken away, and police lashed out with batons. Nevertheless, arrestees were carted off, with some not released until 9 p.m. that day. Though the struggle on campus was over by 11 a.m. on May 6, its aftershocks continue to reverberate.
Arrested students still face disciplinary proceedings
The memories and reflections of those arrested on May 6, as shared with The UCSD Guardian’s Managing Editor Vivian Dueker, can be found in the piece opposite this one. But for those arrested on May 6, the day’s events are more than a memory — they are an ongoing reality that continues to shape their lives.
Although San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan ultimately declined to file criminal cases against any arrested students, the statute of limitations to pursue charges against any encampment participant will not expire until exactly one year after their arrest, on May 6, 2025. Despite student conduct cases beginning the same day as their arrest, some of the arrested students are still embroiled in University disciplinary hearings.
After their initial arrest and processing in May 2024, students were informed by the Center for Student Accountability, Growth, and Education that they must schedule an administrative resolution meeting, the first step in the student conduct process wherein students discuss alleged charges with a student conduct officer. Little did they know, this process would proceed for months to come.
Each arrestee was subject to a different, seemingly random, set of charges, including any amount of the following: failing to disperse when given a lawful command to do so, obstructing University operations, distributing prohibited literature, and sleeping on campus outside of designated dormitories.
For many arrestees, it was challenging to navigate such an uncertain and drawn-out process with no explicit timeline. Students met with lawyers who advised them on how to not incriminate themselves, how to question witnesses, and how to respond to administration’s questions in disciplinary hearings.
All students, except one, were found guilty, according to the information currently available to The Guardian, though some hearings remain unresolved. According to the sanctioning guidelines on the SAGE website, “The goal [of sanctions] is not to punish students but rather help them understand how their actions affected themselves and/or their community while providing learning experiences for their growth and development.”
Students were sanctioned with 30 hours of community service, a “practical decision making assessment and reflection” course with a $50 fee, and academic probation for the remainder of the school year.
Many were able to cut down on their community service hours to only 15 or 20 by appealing the administration’s initial decision. Others also chose to “waive” the $50 course fee by completing an additional five hours of community service.
Students who graduated while under academic sanctions were handed a blank piece of paper at graduation instead of their diploma. Some have still not received their diplomas and are therefore without proof of their college degrees, and some have been unable to enroll in graduate school programs as a result.
Many encampment participants who are still UCSD students remain on academic probation today. Those who recently received sanctions may continue to be on probation through the 2025-26 school year.
‘Free speech in America is a myth’ — Students on May 6 and its meaning
The events of May 6 have also impacted students who were not arrested, were not involved in the pro-Palestine student movement, and indeed, students who were not even at UCSD when the event occurred.
At the start of this academic year, the UC system rolled out new restrictive protest policies effective across all nine UC campuses. These policies were clearly designed to prevent a recurrence of last year’s encampments: The new rules prohibit protesters from setting up unauthorized structures, including tents, obstructing free movement on campus, or covering one’s face to conceal one’s identity. Student critics accused the new policies of limiting free expression and abrogating students’ right to peacefully protest.
One student, who participated in the May protests but was not among those arrested, gave a blunt assessment of last years’ events. “It showed me that free speech in America is a myth, period,” he said. “If you go against authority, you get thrown in jail. America is a land of free speech or whatever, but only as long as you don’t say anything that goes against the status quo.”
The student expressed his frustration that the University has never had to face consequences for its actions on May 6 — and the situation has only further deteriorated. “They definitely got away with it,” the student said. “Maybe it radicalized some people, but if you look at how they’ve repressed free speech even more since then — getting groups like [Students for Justice in Palestine] to completely disavow any relation to UCSD, or banning mass gatherings or demonstrations or things like that, I think they’ve 100% gotten away with it. People who are looking to get more informed on the topic [of Palestine] are being barred from having easily accessible information about it. I think that’s kind of what the encampment was all about, was educating people who didn’t know. And you can’t do that anymore.”
In recent months, universities have been rocked by the Trump administration’s campaign of arrests, deportations, and visa revocations — targeting pro-Palestine activists or, sometimes, targeting people for seemingly no reason at all. The student argued that the forcible suppression of the encampments at UCSD and around the country laid the groundwork for the Trump administration’s assault on dissent at America’s universities.
“It was a prelude to what was to come,” the student explained. “It was a prelude to what’s happening now, with people being arrested and deported for no reason.” He encouraged students to continue to resist: “If people capitulate to the repression, it’s just going to get worse. Unless people come together and voice dissent against the University’s tactics, [the administration] is going to feel free to do whatever they want.”
With the events of May 6 now one year in the past, UCSD has an entire group of new students who did not witness the encampment and its suppression. Still, the events made an impression. First-year student Jack Wachter was aware of the broad outline of last May’s events. “I heard about it when it was happening because, obviously, UCSD was on my radar,” Wachter said. “I remember that people were arrested, but I was also aware that there wasn’t any violence going on [on the part of the protesters]. I also know that they canceled Sun God because they were worried about the protesters, which to me felt kind of petty on the administration’s part.”
Wachter says that the amount of political activity on campus during the 2024-25 year has been lower than he anticipated. “I would say it’s been less active than I expected it to be — it’s definitely less active than a place like LA or Berkeley. I definitely think that people try to express their voice, and there is some venue to do that, but the university doesn’t listen as much as it could.”
Certainly, UCSD has seen a downturn in protest activity since last year’s high point.
‘A climate of surveillance and fear’ — Faculty member reflects
For Gary Fields, a professor of communication at UCSD, the events of last May marked a turning point. “We don’t have the same set of rights that we did on May 1 of last year,” Fields said. “What happened in the aftermath of the encampment is that there is still on our campus a climate of surveillance and fear — and self-censorship, actually, which is a terrible thing. When people are afraid to say what they think, speak their minds, the whole environment for free and open discussion of ideas begins to break down. That was a tragic result of what the University did.”
It was Fields who came to address last year’s encampment on behalf of faculty allies the night of May 1. He told the student protesters in the camp, “You are the heirs to the movement that ended the war in Vietnam. You are the heirs to the movement that ended apartheid in South Africa. You are showing us what it means to stand up for equal rights, and all that equal rights stands for. The faculty salutes you, and we stand with you.”
One year later, on May 1, 2025, Fields organized a commemoration of the first anniversary of the beginning of the encampment. Protesters stood with duct-taped mouths in front of Geisel Library, holding signs that read, “5 nights peaceful protest,” “200 police raid encampment,” “64 students and faculty arrested,” “1 giant hole ripped in the fabric of trust at UCSD.”
The Guardian spoke to Fields after the commemoration. “This was a protest that students organized themselves against a terrible situation in Gaza,” Fields said. “If you can’t protest an injustice on a university campus, where can you protest it?”
Fields elaborated on the importance of the University fostering an environment conducive to protest and free expression. “We need to have a space on campus where we can voice our opinions on world affairs in a free and open manner, and not have the University come down on us like they did last year,” Fields said.
Fields agreed with the aforementioned student’s view that one cannot understand the Trump administration’s campaign of repression without understanding what happened on university campuses last year, including UCSD. “What’s happened is that the Trump administration has exploited what the Biden administration was already saying about protests against genocide,” Fields said. “They were already calling it antisemitic. So, there was already this climate of fear and surveillance that had already been established during the Biden presidency — and it’s intensified. … And they’ve linked it up to intense anti-immigrant politics. And they’ve launched these two things together into an all-out assault against the universities.”
Fields said that the University’s faculty have an obligation to oppose, and have been opposing, the restrictive free speech policies implemented by the University in the wake of the encampment. “We pushed back, and we continue to push back, and we believe it’s essential to have our basic rights — the right to speak our minds and the right to freely assemble when we believe that there are injustices in this world.”
Meaning and memory
In the year that has passed since the Gaza Solidarity Encampment and its sudden and violent end, much has changed — and much has not. UCSD has not made any kind of public statement on the events since they occurred; it appears hopeful that everyone will simply forget it.
For the students who were arrested that morning, that is a difficult proposition. And for the students and faculty who witnessed them, the events of May 6 were disquieting and disillusioning. It seems to prove that the University is willing to do anything to suppress certain kinds of ideas, even resorting to violence.
UCSD is still living in the world that May 6 made — where censorship, surveillance, and fear predominate, where one can no longer be certain of the right to speak one’s mind. One thing is certain, however: The events of last May cast a long shadow, and that shadow will continue to fall across UCSD for a long time to come.
