It is Our Campus

It seems really obvious watching video footage of last Thursday and Friday that the police were a bit out of hand. This is our campus and it’s not the student’s fault that the University was kept open and therefore hundreds of students remained on campus. I am not disputing that maybe it would have been a better choice to stay inside their dorms and houses, but you cannot lawfully confine students to their rooms because the school refuses to cancel classes and close dorms. It seems like Oakland would have been better off without the hundreds of cops. Tensions were high because of the cops and I don’t think their presence was helpful on either Thursday or Friday night. I don’t have anything against cops and when I was walking through Oakland and into the big rally of Friday afternoon, I was actually kind of glad all the cops were there. It seems like during the day they behave themselves and stay on the sidelines unless something illegal or potentially dangerous is happening. But the footage from those two evenings show the police being unnecessarily violent.