Brooklyn, NY – When the New York University Students for a Democratic Society (NYU SDS) held their first meeting of the semester on September 6, an NYPD officer with several others from the counterterrorism unit walked up to members in an attempt to intimidate them.

When members arrived to set up for their meeting, they saw an extensive NYPD and NYU Campus Security presence. When asked by an SDS member if NYU called them to arrive at the scene, the officer claimed they were just there coincidentally. Yet, right after the NYPD walked up to SDS, NYU campus security arrived to also confront SDS.

When asked the same question by the NYU SDS member, the campus security officer claimed NYU would never call the cops on its own students. The SDS member pushed back, saying, “You called the NYPD on your own students last year for the encampment, leading to 60-plus students getting arrested and multiple students being brutalized by cops.”

The officer then claimed that the encampment was not a peaceful action. Looking at what transpired earlier this year, the NYU encampments were peaceful up until the moment the NYPD was called. All the injuries, all the arrests were as a direct result of the NYPD, which NYU themselves called on its own students.

NYU plans to continue its repression on its own students, which it has made clear in its passing of the Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment policy which protects the political movement of Zionism from criticism. It also set further rules and guidelines on student protest saying that they should not disrupt university activities, which is what protests should be doing.

“The hypocrisy of NYU is clear. It does not care about the safety of its own students, if it is willing to call the cops on them,” an SDS member said. “They don’t even care about peace, as it continues to maintain ties to and investments in military companies who are supplying a literal genocide in occupied Palestine right now.”

NYU SDS has made it clear they will not be intimidated by NYU and the NYPD, and they will keep on their fight to win their demands.

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