Students shut down Cal Poly Humboldt campus to support Gaza ceasefire, divestment from Israel

After a violent clash with campus and local police Monday night, students at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt have taken over a campus administration building and barricaded themselves inside, demanding that the university sever ties with Israel and any companies that support “the Zionist entity.”

Cal Poly Humboldt joins several college campuses across the U.S., including Columbia University in New York City, University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California to occupy campus spaces in support of Palestine.

But so far, Humboldt is the only college where students have occupied a campus building. The university halted all campus operations on Monday amid the protests, calling the demonstration a “dangerous situation,” and on Wednesday emailed students that the campus would remain closed through the weekend.

Inside Siemens Hall, students and community members have barricaded themselves in the administrative building, and have no plans to leave until campus leadership supports a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and divests from companies that support the Israeli military.

Some students reported that there were close to 150-200 students inside the building, while others reported there were closer to 20-30. There is no one group organizing the occupation; a few dozen students entered Siemens Hall on Monday afternoon around 4 p.m., and more students joined as the police presence grew.

The students were met by a janitor who “did not seem down for the cause,” according to one student who goes by Skunk Spray.

A third-year environmental sciences student who occupied Siemens Hall Monday night, Skunk Spray doesn’t call himself an activist.

“I’m certainly acting,” he said, “but I’m just someone who has a conscience and I’m compelled to do what I believe in. And I believe this is what’s just.”

“The University supports free speech through open dialogue that is respectful and constructive,” the university said in a statement. “That does not include behavior that involves destroying and damaging property, and disrupting students, faculty, and staff from learning, teaching, and working. Everyone deserves to be in an environment where everyone can feel safe, included, and respected.”

The university also said that there are “unidentified non-students with unknown intentions” in the occupied building, which “creates an unpredictable environment.”

As students occupied the hall, the mood around Siemens Hall was joyful. Several hundred students milled about the quad around the occupied building Tuesday night, making signs, participating in dabke dance lessons from a Palestinian student activist and lighting candles at a makeshift altar. A local band set up and to play live music as community members settled in for the night in tents while they ate homemade Mexican food, practiced yoga, and burned sage.

The students and community members blocking the doors during Monday night’s occupation were “really awesome,” Skunk Spray said.

Police “just escalate stuff when they come in here,” but “it was really awesome to see people outside the doors all night. People out here supporting us, keeping watch. They were here with us, and they are here with Palestine.”

Three students were arrested, and then released, Monday night.

Students demand: boycott, divest, ceasefire

“Once I found out this was happening,” said LJ, a Jewish art student from the Bay Area, “I was frozen in my kitchen, and I knew I needed to be here.”

LJ grew up going to Jewish private school and has visited Israel twice.

“I felt an obligation to be in this space as somebody who is a Jew, and people are using being a Jew to justify this whole situation, and I am a Jew who doesn’t want to justify that situation.”

The “situation” is Israel’s continued attacks on Gaza after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. Israel has killed a reported 34,000 people while thousands more suffer grievous injuries, famine, and displacement.

“I need to be there right now,” LJ told herself when she caught wind of the student demonstration, despite many members of her community calling her a “self-hating Jew.”

“Honestly,” LJ said, “I’ve never felt more Jewish, fighting for someone that I believe in. We have been taught to repair the world. It’s called ‘tikkun olam.’ Using the fact that you’re Jewish to justify the killings of innocent people ... it hurts the Jewish community.”

LJ is one of hundreds of students supporting occupiers’ five demands: The students won’t leave Siemens Hall until the university does the following: disclose all financial ties to “the Zionist entity,” cut ties with all Israeli universities, divest from all companies “complicit in the occupation of Palestine,” drop charges and attacks against student organizers and call for “an immediate ceasefire and end to the occupation of Palestine.”

In its statement Wednesday, the school said that the barricaded doors have created a fire hazard, and many toilets in the building are reportedly no longer working, according to the statement.

“The safety, health, and well-being of our students is paramount as the situation has become increasingly complex,” the statement read. University officials are “communicating with protesters and continuing to encourage them to leave as soon as possible.”

Many of the students demonstrating outside Siemens Hall said that being on campus gives them purpose amid the violence in Gaza.

“My family is Pakistani Muslim, so we’re more aware of this than other people are,” said one first-year student wearing a keffiyeh at the demonstration, who said that watching the violence unfold on social media prompted him to get involved. The student asked not to be identified because he feared repercussions from the university.

He missed class on Monday but was eager to join the protesters when he found out students were occupying Siemens Hall.

“I think the solution is to get involved, because at least I can feel like I’m doing my part, even if it’s not enough, I’m doing the best I can to make something of it. I find peace in that.”

Cal Poly Humboldt, which was previously called Humboldt State University until 2022, when it became a Cal Poly campus, is the only California State University campus where students have occupied to the extent of a university shutdown.

The student body is also unique among the many elite and private universities, such as Columbia and USC, where similar demonstrations are taking place.

Humboldt students, often cast as the hippie stoners of the CSU system, are typically lower income than other CSU students. As of 2019, one in five Humboldt students is also experiencing homelessness. Amid a housing shortage for students, the university began fining students for sleeping in campus parking lots in RVs late last year.

“Being inside that building, there was a fundamental, minimum common agreement that we knew there was a potential for police action, for legal action, for violence. But we’re not here for violence,” said Skunk Spray.

“This is the greatest expression of love. That is the thing we all share. It’s not comfortable, sleeping on the floor outside the president’s office. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for love.”