As the Editorial Board of UCLA Radio, we are first and foremost student reporters. In the past year, we have witnessed rapidly escalating violence sanctioned and perpetrated by UCLA’s administration while covering Palestine solidarity demonstrations across campus; violence that cannot even compare to the genocide these protesters were resisting.
Last spring, we watched as a mob of pro-Israel agitators threw mice, severe allergens, and finally teargas and fireworks at our peers over nights of perpetual harassment on Royce Quad. We watched as these aggressors followed and assaulted our fellow student reporters from the Daily Bruin on April 30, while masses of students anxiously waited for UCPD to respond — only to have 911 operators hang up on their calls. We then watched UCLA invite riot police onto our campus to surveil, brutalize, and arrest its students and workers time and time again, from the May 1-2 Palestine Solidarity Encampment sweep to the November 19 student strike against genocide.
In Chancellor Frenk’s statement released Wednesday afternoon, deceptively titled “A Stand Against Violence in Our Community,” it was immediately clear that he did not intend to respond to the real violence brutally inflicted upon students and workers by administration’s collaborators, ranging from pro-Israel extremists to police trained alongside the Israeli occupation forces. Instead, he moved to suspend Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Graduate SJP (GSJP), using last week’s protest at UC Regent Jonathan “Jay” Sures’s house as justification for this severe overreach.
SJP challenged the Regent’s fundraising for the LAPD, representation of the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and leadership in weapons manufacturing — and to our administration, that was enough to discard its constitutional obligations to free speech. To the LAPD, that was enough to warrant a police response far quicker and far more decisive than the night of April 30. Mass assaults on students and workers are acceptable; it’s faux bloody handprints on a Regent’s $11M mansion where UCLA and its police partners draw the line.
At a time when large parts of our campus are increasingly vulnerable — whether from the devastating LA wildfires or Trump’s attacks on undocumented and international students — UCLA’s priorities have never been clearer. Its commitment to financial gain and war profiteering comes first, and students and workers are hardly an afterthought.
This quarter, Chancellor Frenk has ignored urgent demands from undocumented student advocacy group IDEAS (Improving Dreams, Equality, Access, and Success) at UCLA for a meeting about the university’s response to Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda. Administrators delayed and then refused to extend a transition to hybrid learning even when wildfires raged a few miles away, instead opting to mislead the community by cherry-picking air quality data as toxic smoke hung over our campus.
In sharp contrast to UCLA’s overt apathy, SJP and GSJP remain committed to defending the undocumented community and provided life-saving mutual aid amidst the wildfires, distributing necessities from bottled water to KN95 masks. But Chancellor Frenk, listless in the face of fascism and fire, has somehow found the time to suspend these organizations that have consistently stepped up for our community when UCLA has failed — all to protect the peace of a UC Regent deeply complicit in occupation and genocide. Palestinian families waking up to bombs in Gaza and bulldozers in Jenin have no luxury of this “peace” that Chancellor Frenk defends so ferociously for Regent Sures.
We demand that UCLA reverse its suspension of SJP and GSJP, abolish the campus policing that perpetuates real violence, and instead divert its resources to supporting students. We demand that UCLA disclose its assets and divest from predatory and militaristic firms like Blackstone and BlackRock, complicit in displacement from LA to Palestine, reinvesting in its students and workers.
We are painfully aware that these demands carry little weight to our administration, which has made it abundantly clear that it has no regard for its students. We are the ones who will execute these changes. UCLA’s suspensions and repression cannot silence us.
Students and workers, make your voices heard. When the UC Regents come to our campus in March, let them know that war criminals are not welcome on our campus. As Israel’s violence in Gaza threatens to break an increasingly precarious ceasefire and its occupation forces continue to displace tens of thousands in Jenin, we must continue to resist. Resist until the UC divests and fight until Palestine is free.
There can be no business as usual amid repression, occupation, and genocide. The path toward liberation is a difficult one, but it will always be worth taking.
The views expressed in this article represent the majority opinion of the UCLA Radio Editorial Board. Editorials do not necessarily represent UCLA Radio as a whole.
