The Virginia secretary of education told the state’s universities they must ensure student safety in the fall amid reports that upcoming anti-Israel protests on campus "will be even more chaotic."
Secretary Aimee R. Guidera urged Virginia public universities on Thursday to take measures to strengthen campus safety and security ahead of the fall semester, according to an email obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. In the spring, anti-Israel protesters caused massive disruptions to learning and jeopardized the safety of Jewish students on campuses across the nation, including at the University of Virginia, the state’s flagship college.
"Considering the challenges faced on college and university campuses last academic year and reports that the fall will be even more chaotic, we have asked each institution [to] take proactive steps to update policies and improve communication channels before students return this fall," Guidera said.
"I cannot overemphasize the critical importance of completing this necessary work within the next couple of weeks before students return to campus," she added in bold.
Specifically, she urged schools to update codes of conduct regarding disruptions of school functions, legal violations, "unlawful masking," encampments, and "facility usage by affiliated and non-affiliated persons/groups."
Guidera also emphasized the need to maintain open lines of communication and encouraged universities to invite campus chiefs of police to university board meetings to provide regular updates on campus safety. Her office did not respond to a request for comment.
In the spring, several Virginia universities faced unruly anti-Israel activists. At the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, a dozen protesters were arrested after they erected an unauthorized encampment and refused to leave the area. Similarly, at the University of Virginia, police broke up an encampment and arrested 27 people after it was declared an unlawful assembly. The school subsequently withheld degrees from four graduating students.
Elsewhere in the nation, particularly at elite universities, protests gripped campuses. At Columbia University, for example, an encampment of anti-Israel protesters disrupted the school for two weeks before dozens of students stormed a campus building, smashing glass doors and barricading the entrance. Similarly, Massachusetts Institute of Technology officials repeatedly pushed back a deadline to clear an encampment that disturbed campus operations, ultimately conflicting with an annual Israeli Independence Day celebration.
While campus protests have calmed over the summer, anti-Israel leaders have indicated that demonstrations will resume in the fall.
Mahmoud Khalil, a student negotiator with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, told The Hill that students will continue to push Columbia to divest from Israel by "any available means necessary."
"And we’ve been working all this summer on our plans, on what’s next to pressure Columbia to listen to the students and to decide to be on the right side of history," Khalil said.
"We’re considering a wide range of actions, throughout the semester, encampments and protests and all of that," he added. "But for us, encampment is now our new base."
The director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’s Maryland office, Zainab Chaudry, also said students have been hard at work.
"I think that there’s some students who already started planning over the summer. There have been some meetings that have been organized by some student leaders at different campuses to strategize ahead of the upcoming 2024-2025 academic year," Chaudry told The Hill.