Demonstrators have gathered in at the least 30 US universities since final month, usually erecting tent encampments to protest the hovering dying toll within the Gaza Strip.
However the sight of helmeted officers at two of America’s most prestigious universities left some college students dismayed.
“I do not assume we must always have a heavy police pressure on campus,” UCLA pupil Mark Torre, 22, instructed AFP as he surveyed the scene from behind steel obstacles.
“However increasingly, day-to-day, I believe it is a essential evil, to at the least preserve security on campus.”
At Columbia and on the Metropolis College of New York, the place police cleared out demonstrators in a single day, some college students decried the police conduct.
“We had been assaulted, brutally arrested. And I used to be held for as much as six hours earlier than being launched, fairly banged up, bought stomped on, bought lower up,” one CUNY pupil who gave his title solely as Jose instructed AFP.
A medical pupil providing therapy to detainees as they had been launched described a litany of accidents.
“We have seen issues like extreme head traumas, concussions, somebody was knocked unconscious within the encampment by police, somebody was thrown down the steps,” stated the coed, who gave her title as Isabel.
About 300 arrests had been made at Columbia and CUNY, Police Commissioner Edward Caban stated.
Mayor Eric Adams blamed “outdoors agitators” for ratcheting up tensions. Columbia college students have denied outsiders had been concerned.
College president Minouche Shafik, who has come below hearth over her resolution to name in police, stated the flip of occasions “crammed me with deep disappointment.”
“I’m sorry we reached this level,” she stated in a press release.
