LTTP: Late to the Protest
The protest started at 4:30 am, but I showed up at 2pm, well after the action had dwindled down. By the time I got there it was a mellow hippie vibe. I found a classmate and talked to her about how it went earlier in the day. She said she had been there since the start at 4:30am. She informed me that the action was heaviest around 9pm. I asked if there were any confrontations and she said told me that cars were trying to drive through the students gathered across the entrance. A couple students actually got hit by cars. She mentioned one foot injury. A couple cars got dented from this, one car got its back window smashed. I'll trust her word on this. She told me there was an assembly at 5pm and that I should check that out.
Some initial shots walking up to the picket lines. By now the police had decided to shut off the roads. The TV stations had set up by now as well.
I asked about this slug, assuming that he was strung up along the picket line. Classmate said she wasn't around when he had been dropped and left to the ground. The slug's day only gets worse.
For some reason, even though the admin staff and faculty knew this was coming and had been prepared to just not have campus in session, the Campus decided that the Arboretum aka Flower Shop was important to keep open and ordered the employees to show up. So an announcement was made for some people to go help create another line at there, so I followed them, then proceeded the rest of the way from there to the other campus entrance. The arboretum is about halfway between the front and side entrance.
These are assembly photos. The threads of the rope of people that had been strung along to shut down the campus were beginning to unwind in different directions. The slug was doing no better.
You'll notice some children in these photos. There are two factors for this: One, the students with family who were protesting the cost of Family Housing. These were mostly gathered at the side entrance. Two, neighbors were taking their kids out on a walk to the protest, like a fun little outing.