In the hours, days and weeks after a group of student demonstrators entered Siemens Hall at about 4:25 p.m. on April 22 intent on bringing awareness to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, Cal Poly Humboldt has consistently maintained they almost immediately began vandalizing the building and barricading its entrances, which is why police were summoned to the scene.
In official internal and external messaging, the university maintained that police had been called to the building — and then asked to clear it — because the situation had become “increasingly dangerous,” that “protesters had blocked exits” and that “vandalism of the building’s interior had already begun” before police arrived. In a sit-down interview with the North Coast Journal in the immediate aftermath of what became an eight-day hard occupation of the building that split the university community and prompted administration to institute a hard closure, threatening any students, faculty, staff or community members who set foot on campus with arrest, Chief of Staff Mark Johnson said he’d personally witnessed demonstrators barricading doors and vandalizing the building prior to police arrival.
“This wasn’t a peaceful protest,” he said. “This wasn’t an issue of free speech. This was an issue of lawless behavior that was premeditated.”
But body camera footage from the first officers on scene that afternoon tells a different story, showing a building undamaged and, with one exception, free of vandalism, with demonstrators seemingly willing to let people enter and exit as they pleased. The footage captured an employee in the president’s office saying the protesters “seem friendly” and Johnson himself dismissing any safety concerns associated with the protest.
“I don’t have any fears for my safety or anybody else’s safety,” the footage captured Johnson telling then Interim University Police Chief Peter Cress about 40 minutes after protesters first entered the building. “What I’m concerned about is not allowing that to take root anywhere in this building. They’re free to go out in the quad and voice their political opinion all day and all night as long as they’re not sleeping on campus property. But they’re not going to camp out in the administrative building on campus. … This is not a violent group. They’re just misguided.”
The Journal reached out to CPH’s marketing and communications office, seeking an explanation to the apparent disconnect between the university’s messaging and what the video footage showed. After some back-and-forth, university spokesperson Aileen Yoo indicated the primary reason police were called to the building was that the demonstrators were violating the campus’ time, place and manner policy, which restricts protest activity to certain times and places. Yoo also clarified that the charge of vandalism occurring in the building before police arrived was accurate — pointing back to the Journal’s reference in a prior email of a single instance of the word “divest” having been written in Sharpie on a door placard — and not the widespread graffiti seen in the building days later, and that references to barricaded or blocked entrances referred to the tents student protesters had set up in the building’s foyers (which, based on the video, allowed room for people to come and go from the building). Johnson’s comments about not being concerned for anyone’s safety, Yoo said, were about whether he felt personally threatened and “not an overall assessment of the safety of the building or the fire dangers posed to the people inside it.”
“Imagine you’re an employee inside a store where you’re working when several people come in and initially put up a tent in front of an exit (which is a fire hazard), and tag a wall,” Yoo wrote. “The employee is concerned enough to call the police. Police should absolutely respond.”
The footage also makes clear that when officers did arrive on campus, within minutes they were directed by Johnson to deliver an ultimatum to protesters: leave the building voluntarily or face arrest. The protesters declined to leave, leading to an escalating police presence outside the building and a violent confrontation at its main entrance hours later as officers tried to force their way inside and protesters pushed them back, video of which went viral.
The more than nine hours of footage obtained through a California Public Records Act request offers the most unfiltered view of the first hours of the protest that would evolve into an eight-day occupation of the university’s administrative building. The ongoing occupation prompted then President Tom Jackson Jr. to institute a “hard closure” of the university, threatening students, faculty, staff and community who set foot on campus with arrest, while moving course instruction online and moving commencement ceremonies off campus. The protest and the administration’s response to it deeply divided the campus, with the University Senate passing a no confidence vote in the leadership of Jackson and Johnson, and hundreds of faculty and staff members signing onto a letter calling for the pair’s resignations, as some Jewish community members likened slogans and language used by the protesters to hate speech.
The occupation of Siemens Hall ultimately ended when the university brought in hundreds of police officers from throughout Northern California to clear the campus before dawn on April 30, with police arresting about two dozen remaining protesters who they found sitting in a circle in the university quad.
The semester closed with administration announcing a new policy under which virtually all campus buildings would be locked 24-hours a day, accessible only with university issued key cards, though the policy did not seem to be being followed when the Journal visited campus multiple times in recent weeks. In July, the embattled Jackson announced he would be stepping down from the presidency and exercising a retreat clause in his contract to take a tenured professor position that will pay him about $173,000 annually, though the university hasn’t said exactly what he will be doing. In the final weeks of Jackson’s presidency, he appointed Johnson, his chief of staff, to serve as the university’s interim vice president of advancement at an annual salary of $247,569.
Meanwhile, the university estimates protesters caused approximately $1.6 million in physical damage to the campus, though it has not yet provided the Journal with documentation of those costs, or even a breakdown of expenses by damage type or building, despite repeated requests.
As the start of the fall semester approached, California State University Chancellor Mildred Garcia issued a systemwide directive instituting a revised time, place and manner policy aimed to restrict protest activities on campuses, explicitly forbidding encampments, unauthorized structures and barriers, occupying buildings and protesters’ wearing facemasks for the purposes of concealing their identity.
As CPH returned to session last month, assistant professor Rouhollah Aghasaleh, who was the sole faculty member arrested with protesters in the spring, was not on campus, reportedly remaining on temporary suspension, his future with the university uncertain. Also unclear are the outcomes of the dozens of disciplinary actions the university initiated against students alleged to have participated in the occupation of Siemens Hall. Humboldt County District Attorney Stacey Eads, meanwhile, has rejected 27 of the 39 cases referred to her office for prosecution stemming from protest arrests. Twelve referrals remain pending, she told the Journal, her office having sent them back to the University Police Department for further investigation.
Acting President Michael Spagna sent out a campuswide email Sept. 11 that, in part, addressed the spring protest, noting it had “tested” the campus’ sense of community.
“While the university has been focused on helping our campus community heal, I want to acknowledge that the emotional impact of the protests cannot be understated,” Spagna wrote. “And although the events of April seem long ago, for many, it still feels raw.”
Spagna went on to note the California Office of Emergency Services has facilitated an after action review of how the protests “were handled and what could have been done differently.”
“Based on that review … we have been refining and improving university processes,” he wrote, adding the university would provide “more details from the review” in the near future and look to convene open forums on campus to discuss the review’s findings and next steps.
The California Office of Emergency Services, however, said they did not lead or facilitate the university’s review and only participated in it, referring inquiries back to the university.
The body camera footage released by the university in response to the Journal’s request is by no means exhaustive. Footage from some officers appears to be incomplete, while that of other officers’ is missing entirely. Video provided from Cress is missing an approximately 150-minute chunk from the last hours of the police response April 22. Repeated Journal inquiries beginning Sept. 4, inquiring what footage was missing — or may have been withheld or redacted — and why have not been answered by the university.
Pick up the Sept. 26 edition of the Journal for a detailed look at the footage and what it adds to the community’s understanding of what happened in Siemens Hall.
Related Stories
‘Regrettably Deficient’
‘False Narratives’
‘On Siemens Hall Hill’
This article appears in River Runs The Free.
