Critics Don't Buy Ryan's Tent-Takedown Rationale

Signs on UVA Lawn doors, May 7, 2024 (The Schilling Show blog).

From professors to Lawn residents, members of the University of Virginia community continue to criticize President Jim Ryan and senior UVA leadership for their decision Saturday to shut down the UVA Encampment for Gaza "liberated zone." While Ryan's defense of his decision during a virtual "town hall" meeting Tuesday won praise in some quarters, such as online UVA-parent fora, many students and faculty members continued to condemn the action.

"We have nothing but contempt for the state, city and county police..." stated a poster on the door of a Lawn resident. "To call these officers of the law pigs is perhaps too mild." Another sign captured in photos published on blog of the local talk-radio Schilling Show expressed "bitter opposition" to "the war and totalitarianism in the nation."

In its coverage of the town hall, The Daily Progress called into question details in the narrative of events detailed by Ryan and University Police Department Chief Tim Longo and described the "town hall" as more akin to a press conference than a genuine give-and-take.

Wrote the Charlottesville newspaper:

The virtual meeting was meant to “provide an update and answer questions about Saturday’s protest near the UVA Chapel that led police to declare an unlawful assembly and arrest demonstrators who didn’t leave.” Many left with their questions still unanswered.

That was because the university curated all of the questions it would answer beforehand. Participants were allowed to register to submit questions, but were not told how the university would determine which queries to pose. None of the questions submitted by The Daily Progress were asked or answered Tuesday.

The Daily Progress also quoted Robert Redick, a Charlottesville resident who visited the encampment, as saying that there was genuine confusion among the protesters over their right to put up tents. “People were saying very sincerely, ‘We actually are allowed to put up small individual tents, but we’re choosing not to do so. So when they [meaning Ryan and Longo] say there was no confusion about this, I think that’s just not true.”

Signs on UVA Lawn doors, May 7, 2024 (The Schilling Show blog).

The newspaper describes Redick as "a Charlottesville native, author and fourth-generation UVa graduate." But he was hardly a dispassionate observer. As his personal website says, "Racism endures in my beloved city and I condemn it absolutely. I have fought it all my life. ... Like Virginia itself, Charlottesville is a place of contradictions. Its history is indefensible; so are aspects of its current politics. And yet the ideals that propelled me into social justice work and a life that put art and conscience over wealth and comfort were incubated there."

The Daily Progress also quoted Professor Walt Heinecke, one of the faculty members who served as a liaison between the protesters and UVA administration, as disputing Ryan's narrative.

“When the police came up on protesters, they stood there with umbrellas out and police started getting aggressive: shoving, pushing, g[r]abbing," he said. "I was ten feet from state police as they brutalized protesters and students. I saw people thrown to the ground and roughed up and pepper-sprayed.”

Similarly, The Washington Post quoted Laura Goldblatt, an assistant English professor who acted as an intermediary: "What we saw on Saturday was brutal."

Perhaps the most damning criticism could be found on a "Letter of Protest and Condemnation," appended to a sign on one of the Lawn room doors.

The letter, purported to be written by "we, the residents of the Lawn," condemned the arrest of students who "civilly resisted the police on May 4th" and demanded that the administration "halt the sanctioning of our peers" and allow them to return to Grounds "without the threat of punishment."

"Many of us were trapped in our rooms as the police blockaded alleyways, leading to increased distress among residents of the Academical Village," the statement continued. "We could hear the cries of our peers as they were sprayed with chemical irritants and dragged into the alleys to be arrested. Police denied us the ability to help our peers, which caused anxiety among some residents. Many were also forced to spend the night elsewhere to escape the panic and claustrophobia of the day."

Update

UVA Encampment for Gaza has published on its Instagram page a letter from Ashon Crowley, a professor of religious studies, resigning from the Strategic Research Planning Committee. Portraying the encampment as a place where peaceful dancing, chanting, studying and sleeping occurred, he argued that the erection of tents "posed no threat" to anyone. Police in riot gear, rubber bullets, tear gas, and guns, he said, "did not make anyone safer."

Update

Rob Schilling has posted more photos of signs on Lawn doors.