At 4 a.m. Wednesday, a group of roughly 55 UC Santa Barbara students set up an encampment to serve as a “liberated space” in solidarity with Palestine. 

The UCSB encampment joins other encampments on university campuses throughout the United States. In the past few weeks, protests at Columbia University in New York, UC Los Angeles and UC Berkeley have sparked controversy and safety concerns, and have led to students getting arrested.

The encampment is on the lawn between North Hall, also known as Malcolm X Hall, and the library. The encampment is continuing to welcome more students to join, and organizers said that they don’t plan to leave. 

Lexi, a UCSB student who did not provide her last name for safety reasons, said the group of students in the encampment are not affiliated with any particular group or organization but are gathered because of their collective belief in liberation. 

“​​The university is not our friend in that. They’re sending our tuition money to Israel and also to war and weapons providers, and it affects a lot of people,” she said. “I think we’re all here because we recognize that our struggles are interconnected, and we’re tired of being repressed and oppressed by the university.”

Lexi said the encampment group will announce their demands later, but in the meantime their goal is to bring awareness to what is going on.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Lexi said there has been no communication between students in the encampment and university administration. Students are welcome to come and go as they please and continue attending classes if they wish to do so.

“We want people to feel welcome, and to come and go and leave as they please because people do have responsibilities to attend to and this is one of the responsibilities,” Lexi said. “I’m very happy to see that we can have that balance between still trying to pursue a degree, even though it’s under an institution that supports genocide.”

Lexi said they are inviting all students to visit the encampment to share their experience of oppression and displacement. Students plan to make crafts, write, and host open mic events and teach-ins.

Students in the encampment are accepting donations for tents, blankets, food and water.

On Tuesday evening, before the encampment was set up, Students for Justice in Palestine, UC Divest and Jewish Voice for Peace shared on Instagram that they are not affiliated with the encampment.

On Wednesday afternoon, students, faculty, and graduate workers rallied outside of Engineering II calling for the university to break all ties with military funding and to disclose and divest their funding. 

The rally was also in honor of May Day, a holiday that recognizes the struggles and achievements of workers and the labor movement.

Organizers set up at the Engineering II concourse, and a large group of academic workers and students marched from the Arbor to the Engineering II concourse.

Throughout the rally, protesters repeated chants calling for an end to war funding, for a free Palestine and for the university to stop participating in genocide. 

Chants repeated by the protesters included “UC, UC you can’t hide, you are funding genocide” and “Engineering you can’t hide, you are building genocide.”

The rally began at 1:30 p.m. and lasted about 90 minutes. Along with chanting, the rally included multiple speeches from students, graduate workers and faculty.

Jane Ward, chair of the Feminist Studies Department and a member of Academics for Justice in Palestine, spoke at the rally calling for divestment in military funds and a liberated Palestine. 

“Today is the 207th day of the relentless genocide that is targeting the Palestinian past, present and future,” Ward said. 

Ward said knowledge is under attack as universities and schools throughout Palestine have been destroyed. 

Charmaine Chua, an assistant professor in the Global Studies Department, called on workers to refuse to build weapons for Israel, refuse to transport weapons to Israel, and to pressure institutions and the government to stop providing military aid in Israel.  

“We have the power to refuse defense funding, we have the power to force the UC to break its contracts with the U.S. Army, to break its relations with Israel and to demand an end to the UC military industrial complex,” Chua said during the rally. 

The rally continued with no violent incidents or counter-protests. Protesters repeated chants, and a large group went to join the encampment once the rally ended.