UB’s Faculty Senate approved a resolution this past week criticizing UB President Tripathi’s disproportionate response to peaceful anti-war protests on May 1. The resolution passed with 35 faculty senators voting in favor, 17 opposed and 1 abstention.
The vote took place at the annual meeting of the voting faculty. More than 200 faculty attended the meeting via Zoom.
The faculty senate resolution was spurred by a letter signed by more than 300 faculty and staff across UB — including the Schools of Engineering, Medicine, Law, and the College of Arts and Sciences — disturbed by the UB administration’s handling of the peaceful protests against the war in Gaza on May 1.
“Officers nearly outnumbered protestors,” the letter reads. In calling in officers from four different jurisdictions in a show of overwhelming force, “the University demonstrated its intolerance towards free expression and flagrant disregard for student safety,” the letter continues.
Faculty cited numerous examples of the administration’s poor handling of the protests, beginning with escalating the situation with an overwhelming police presence for a small peaceful protest. The police moved on the crowd, pushing students toward an active parking lot.
Non-UPD police insulted a student journalist. One female student’s hijab unraveled as she was forcibly restrained. “The disproportionate response,” faculty conclude, “made our campus community not safer, but more threatening.”
One signatory to the letter, law professor Anthony O’Rourke, spoke at the senate meeting of the danger the UB administration created by using outside police departments to disperse a nonviolent protest. “At Columbia University” O’Rourke said, “an NYPD officer accidentally fired a gun when clearing a building of protesters. That kind of unpredictable and potentially lethal violence is always a risk when police are called to quell a protest, and the UB administration chose to unnecessarily expose its students to this risk for engaging in peaceful assembly.”
After the vote, law professor Athena Mutua, who signed the letter and spoke to the Senate, commented, “I am delighted that the Faculty Senate resolution passed. The May 1 protests and subsequent events call out for a review of UB’s policies on free speech, assembly, and the use of outside police force.”
Mutua compared the disproportionate response on May 1 to protests on campus last year when a conservative outside group brought Michael Knowles to campus. “I attended the Knowles protest last year,” she continued, “which was bigger, noisier and boisterous by comparison and continued past sunset. I was proud of the way the university administration handled the entire affair. We know how to do this. Imagine my surprise in learning that outside police from a host of different jurisdictions had been called to campus this time. A massive number of police rushed a small crowd of students who by all accounts were peacefully protesting. The escalation was dangerous. And the contrast with the Knowles protest could not be more stark.”
The faculty senate resolution called for all charges to be dropped against protesters and for a public review of the relevant policies and protocols related to student protests, UB Police and outside police.