Student Protesters Were Suspended With No Chance to Defend Themselves. Will Courts Return Them to Campus?
A Palestine solidarity demonstrator is arrested by police at the University of California, Irvine on May 15, 2024, in Irvine, Calif. Photo: Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images
“The suspensions happened immediately and it was without any due process.”
by Akela Lacy
Amid the brutal police crackdowns at more than 100 campus protests against the war in Gaza the spring, one university in California stood out for its especially harsh treatment of student protesters. The school effectively eliminated any due process for the students by suspending them without making specific allegations of misconduct or allowing the students to respond to vague charges.
Last month, student protesters at University of California, Irvine sued the school regents and chancellor for suspending them without any notice or a chance to present evidence in their defense. On Tuesday, plaintiffs in the suit filed a motion to ask the Superior Court of California to step in.
The five students are asking the court to force the school to halt the suspensions and allow students to resume their studies, register for fall classes, go back to campus jobs, and regain access to campus housing.
More than 3,000 people were arrested during brutal police crackdowns on campus protests this year, according to a protest tracker developed by The Appeal. UCI is still an outlier — it’s one of the only schools in the country that issued interim suspensions banning students from campus before they had a chance to respond. The university’s approach was, a representative for the students said, unprecedented.
“That’s outrageous — that’s not how due process is supposed to work,” said Thomas Harvey, an attorney representing the students in the suit. “They seem to be punishing our clients with a method that not only is unprecedented in UCI’s use in terms of responses to protests or student conduct issues, but also it stands out as unusual among the entire UC system.”
Tom Vasich, a spokesperson for UCI, said, “The university does not comment on lawsuits.”
At least two of the students were prohibited from graduating in the spring because of the suspensions. They will eventually have to take and pay for another semester of classes but are still barred from registering for courses for the upcoming fall semester.
The UCI chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine also received an interim suspension. SJP chapters at schools around the country have been targeted under bans and suspensions in crackdowns on campus protests. SJP at UCI was also told as a result of the suspension that the club could not post on their own Instagram page.
Students suspended at UCI this spring received notices from the school that listed no specific allegations against them but said they were present at protests where the school claimed that violations of campus policy had allegedly occurred.
The students said they were not given an opportunity to have a hearing on the claims against them or to present evidence in their defense before the suspension went into effect. Students who received the suspension notices were told that they could not attend classes in person or online, access student housing, or be on campus at all, effective immediately.
Interim suspensions have never been used in this way at UCI or at any other schools in the UC system, said Harvey, the plaintiffs’ attorney.
“You think about the draconian ways they cracked down on dissent at UCLA, and UCLA still hasn’t used interim suspensions to punish their students,” he said. “They’re not saying, ‘You can’t come on campus indefinitely until we resolve your student conduct hearing,’” he added. “They’re not issuing the punishment in advance of the hearing, which is what they’re doing at UCI.”
Students are hurting emotionally, financially, and otherwise. But the suspensions haven’t discouraged them from speaking out against the war on Gaza.
“This is nothing but a scare tactic to intimidate and shake our resolve,” one of the student plaintiffs, who requested anonymity to avoid reprisals, told The Intercept. “The university hopes to shift our attention away from our demands for divestment. But these suspensions are not going to deter us from fighting for the liberation of Palestine. If anything, it’s strengthening our resolve.”
No Due Process
When a student at UCI is accused of violating school policy, they go through a student conduct process before any kind of punishment is meted out.
In this case, however, students were punished with interim suspensions before any evidence against them was presented, according to Harvey and another faculty member who supported the students. None of the suspended students have yet been adjudicated to have violated any student conduct rules. That decision is pending and will be made at the resolution of ongoing student conduct processes. While that proceeds, the students are stuck in limbo.