It’s been months since pro-Palestinian protests were broken up by police officers across the Commonwealth, but Virginia Senators held a meeting Tuesday to hear from some of those impacted.
Over the course of the three hour meeting, colleges explained their free speech policies, students shared their experiences being arrested and pepper sprayed and elected officials considered future action.
Rose Pascarell is Vice President of University Life at George Mason University. She said the university has long taken antisemitism seriously, and their strategy to address campus unrest involved regular communication with students from all affected communities.
“Our goal and approach was transparency with students every step of the way,” Pascarell told the body.
Scott Ballenger, special advisor on free expression at the University of Virginia, said pending litigation against the school for their arrests limited his ability to discuss the issue outside of revisions made to free speech policies this summer. That included bans on tents on campus.
“The whole idea of an encampment or occupation of public property is contrary to First Amendment values and an academic institution,” Ballenger said.
Representatives from Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of Mary Washington and other public schools also spoke.
As for students, Christina Sagg described herself as Palestinian student among the “peaceful” protestors at VCU. She said the protest went south when police showed up.
“Within minutes of their arrival I was pepper sprayed and fell to the floor. At one point I was slammed into the glass wall of the library,” she said. “The situation escalated with people running for their lives, being thrown and pushed to the ground.”
Eli Weinger, a Jewish third-year student at UVA, was also among those who supported student protests.
“The only time I felt unsafe as a Jewish student at the University of Virginia is when President [James] Ryan used my identity and my culture as a cudgel with which to oppress constitutionally-protected speech,” Weinger told the panel.
But not all Jewish students felt the same. William and Mary student Gabriel Stein said his campus was rife with antisemitism. He said he and other Jewish students “interrogated” pro-Palestine protestors and found they were wearing masks to conceal their identities to “spew antisemitic slogans.”
“It is our hope that our students are not threatened and not treated as second class citizens,” he said.
Elected officials were similarly less aligned with Republicans on the panel expressing concerns about their inability to ask questions of witnesses. Such questioning is usually part of legislative hearings.
16-year veteran of her local sheriff’s office and Chesapeake Senator Christie New Craig feared it made the meeting appear too one sided.
“People listening, if they just came in mid-meeting, they would think it was police brutality, no police were talking about it; so it looked like we were all agreeing,” the Senator said.
Lynchburg Senator Mark Peake got so perturbed he left the meeting to cool down.
“If we’re not going to get to ask questions, what’s the point of us being here?” Peake asked after the meeting.
But Chesterfield Democratic Senator Ghazala Hashmi, a Democrat and chair of the Senate Education and Health Committee, said the meeting was intended to be a fact-finding effort.
“We learn very little when there is an effort to just grab 30 second sound bites,” Hashmi told Radio IQ.
Still, most officials left the meeting thinking changing laws around protests on campuses was probably a bad idea. Instead, northern Virginia Senator Barbara Favola said schools that sought to deescalate protests should be held up as an example.
“Trying to lower the temperature and the emotion gave us a good model,” the senator said.
Another Senate hearing on the issue is planned for the future, but no date has been set.
A House committee on Campus Safety and First Amendment Expression is scheduled for later this month in Charlottesville.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
