Awesome.
What is NOT awesome are the posts on the university subreddit.
https://twitter.com/thestustustudio/status/1786541753064931643
"At the George Washington University Gaza Solidarity Encampment today, the protesters held a "People's Tribunal" where they put President Ellen Granberg, Provost Christopher Bracey, the Board of Trustees, @GWPolice, and many others on trial."
"Guillotine, Guillotine, Guillotine, Guillotine"
https://www.reddit.com/r/gwu/comments/1ck57j2/your_protest_is_no_longer_peaceful_when_you_call/
"Calling for the execution of university officials is where free speech ends. Whoever led these chants should be expelled and face legal consequences. Zero tolerance for that behavior."
A more effective protest would have been them form a student union and saying meet our demands or we won’t pay tuition next semester.
https://www.reddit.com/r/gwu/comments/1cjmq2a/this_is_huge/
As you know, there was always an American flag 🇺🇸 flying in that location till the protestors commandeered the companion flagpole and replaced the GW flag with a giant Palestinian flag which was illegal for several reasons inc. "When flags of two or more nations are displayed, they are to be flown from separate staffs of the same height. The flags should be of approximately equal size."
Fucking FLAG LAW NERDS, the worst kind of nerds.
This is like the most normal relationship between university students and the bureaucrats that could exist at a university. This is the default state in which universities have operated since their conception; Kids who came to learn cool shit and bureaucrats whose job is to make sure that doesn't happen and they get assembled in to good little doctors and lawyers and theologians. Half the fucking political revolutions in history started in a dorm room.
I remember reading about founding of the first university in Poland, Jagiellon University (in 1364 and then second tme properly in 1400) and already early in the XV century it became famed for being the den of terror and outrage for the average Kraków burgie.
In 1848, leftist university students in Vienna literally laid down on the railroad tracks to stop Austrian imperial troops from being sent to destroy the Hungarian uprising. The students armed themselves and became a crucial reason why Metternich was forced to resign. Imagine being a part of that group, with a copy of the Communist Manifesto hot off the presses in your pocket...
And libs and burgies as usual got scared as fuck of that and immediately jumped straight into monarchy chamber pot.
And with the Arch-Conservatives in charge, nothing bad happened in Austria for the next 100 years.
burghers have always been the same
Some of the first chants I heard on demonstrations were calling for the burning and drowning of specific politicians. It's extremely normal.