Journalism students assaulted and others arrested as protests on university campuses turn violent

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Journalists tasked with covering violent unrest on college campuses across the United States have been arrested and denied access as police moved in to crack down on pro-Palestinian protesters who had set up camps and barricaded themselves inside buildings.

The clashes with journalists come as student-run and traditional media outlets invade university campuses, where police officers have clashed with and arrested hundreds of protesters demanding that universities shed any financial ties to Israel for the war in Gaza. On one campus, attackers reportedly followed and attacked journalism students.

At Columbia University in New York, journalists said they were banned from covering the unrest Tuesday night when police officers in riot gear stormed an academic building where protesters were barricaded, leading to more than 100 arrests. At the University of California, Los Angeles, journalism students reporting on violent clashes between protesters said they were assaulted and gassed. And in Northern California, police detained and arrested local journalists covering university protests.

On some university campuses rocked by protests, access has been restricted to students only, effectively making student journalists the only reliable media outlets reporting on campus protests and clashes.

At UCLA, reporters for the student newspaper The Daily Bruin said they were violently attacked during Tuesday night’s confrontations, including being followed, slapped and sprayed with irritants, the newspaper said. Student editor Anna Dai-Liu told CNN that she was gassed and that other student reporters were assaulted, and that one reporter was taken to emergency care.

“Shortly before 3:30 a.m., four Daily Bruin reporters were walking across campus when they were followed and then assaulted,” the newspaper reported. “Five or six attackers also sprayed the journalists with an irritant. When some journalists went to help a journalist who was thrown to the ground, the attackers began to record with their cell phones.”

The newspaper did not say who attacked the journalism students, but the violence occurred when counterprotesters, some of whom were pro-Israel, clashed with pro-Palestinian protesters on campus.

Immediately following the violence, the Daily Bruin published a scathing editorial on its website criticizing school leaders and declaring, “UCLA is complicit in the violence inflicted on protesters.”

“Daily Bruin reporters who were at the scene were slapped and indirectly sprayed with irritants. Despite also being students, they were not offered protection,” the editorial says.

The university later announced it would cancel all classes on Wednesday “due to distress caused by the violence that took place” overnight.

Hundreds of miles away, at California Polytechnic State University, Humboldt, three journalists were detained while covering protests on campus, according to a local public radio outlet, including a television news reporter who was arrested while filming the demonstrations.

In a video posted online, Adelmi Ruiz, a reporter for ABC affiliate KRCR, who was seen wearing a press badge and a jacket with the station’s logo, was summoned by an officer behind a line of police officers with shields.

“We need you to get out of the way,” an officer was heard saying.

But shortly after, officers were heard telling Ruiz to put away his phone and put his hands behind his back. One officer was heard saying he had been ordered to leave “an active crime scene.”

“They didn’t care that I was a reporter, as long as you’re on campus they can arrest you,” Ruiz later told a colleague in an interview.

Ruiz said they tied her hands, put her in a police vehicle and took her to the Humboldt County Jail, where her mugshot was taken. The sheriff later apologized to her and she was released, he said.

Meanwhile, at Columbia University, dramatic scenes unfolded Tuesday night as police officers in riot gear moved to clear Hamilton Hall, an academic building that had been commandeered by pro-Palestinian protesters. But there was little media presence.

Access to the campus was heavily restricted after authorities prevented journalists from entering the area, which Associated Press reporter Jake Offenhartz called “One of the most frustrating nights for press access I have ever experienced as a reporter.”

Meghnad Bose, a graduate student at Columbia Journalism School, told CNN’s Gabe Cohen that since most of the student reporters were expelled from the vicinity of Hamilton Hall, they could not witness what happened.

“The footage we have from last night is very sparse, and that footage already raises some troubling questions about the NYPD’s conduct on campus,” Bose said. “If we had more journalists, more journalism students, we would have known much better what really happened.”

CNN reporter Julia Vargas Jones, a graduate student at the journalism school, reported from the scene for the network, capturing police storming the building and arresting several protesters amid a chaotic scene.

Without a production team, Vargas Jones said she recruited fellow students to help her go live on CNN, including journalism student Corinne Catibayan, who worked as a television reporter in the Philippines.

“(The police) came in and very clinically pushed everyone aside. As far as they were concerned, there was no press there, they were just waiting to see the students,” Vargas Jones said. “The officers didn’t know we were live on CNN.”

Although Vargas Jones was also eventually expelled from campus, she credited the Columbia Journalism School for standing up for student reporters.

“The school was helping journalism students gain access to the campus and allowing them to use the journalism school facilities 24/7,” he said, noting that he slept overnight in a editing room of the school, next to Catibayan.

“It’s not entirely in line with what the rest of the administration is doing,” Vargas Jones said.

Public interest in the clashes on college campuses has been so high that some student-run news outlets have struggled to stay online amid a surge in audience traffic.

Columbia University radio station WKCR reported overnight that it was experiencing “intermittent outages due to excessive connections” after providing live coverage of the campus arrests. The school newspaper, The Columbia Spectator, was also difficult to access Wednesday afternoon.

UCLA’s Daily Bruin website was also inaccessible at times, sending potential readers to an error page that said the site could not be viewed.

Vargas Jones, who has been a professional journalist for 10 years, said that despite the challenge of covering campus activity, Flashpoint has provided journalism students with much-needed journalism experience and critical transparency for the public.

“Student journalists have a unique and essential role on their campuses by observing and disseminating news,” said Gary Green, executive director of the Student Press Law Center. “It is precisely in times of crisis like these when such coverage is most needed and journalism students are at their best.”

Green said the group that provides legal representation to high school and college news media is concerned about reports of student journalists being threatened and assaulted on campuses. He urged school officials and authorities to ensure that student journalists can safely and accurately report on historic events.

“Now is the time to strengthen our commitment to the student press, not sideline it or undermine it,” he said.

Jelani Cobb, dean of the Columbia Journalism School, also applauded student journalists for their reporting on campus protests.

“It was truly inspiring to see our faculty and students, shoulder to shoulder, covering a national story that broke on our doorstep,” Cobb said in a message to students Wednesday. “His perseverance during a confusing and challenging time cannot be underestimated. “You told the stories that global audiences deserved to hear.”