Peaceful protest or academic disruption? Melbourne University Gaza camp-in goes on

Luca, a 24-year-old master’s degree student at the University of Melbourne, should be hunkered down at his desk, hammering out 12,000 words in essays as his end-of-semester deadline looms.

Instead, he’s been sleeping in a tent. Inside a building.

Master’s degree student Luca says he and other protesters are juggling end-of-year assignments with keeping campus protests alive.

Luca – who asked that his surname not be published because of concerns it could affect his future career, but did provide his student ID – is one of the dozens of protesters against the bloody war in Gaza staging a sit-in inside the Arts West building at the university’s leafy Parkville campus.

“I’ve got four separate essays to do that are all due around the same time and they’re all 3000 words, so I’m just trying to focus on those,” said Luca, who stayed with protesters overnight on Wednesday and returned on Friday morning.

“Luckily, everyone here is also studying, so you get that opportunity where we can sit down and do some writing.”

Protesters have stayed in the Arts West building since Wednesday.

The protest first sprang up on the picturesque South Lawn three weeks ago. On Wednesday, a smaller group of protesters ramped up their campaign by moving into the Arts West building.

They have vowed to remain until the university agrees to sever research agreements with some companies, including weapons manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Boeing and BAE Systems, which they say are profiting from the war.

The university has countered that doing so would undermine its commitment to academic freedom and jeopardise important work being done by its researchers and students.

The sit-in stalemate has triggered an escalating dispute with university management, which is facing political pressure and calls from some Jewish groups to end the protests.

University leaders have threatened to send in law enforcement to clear the camp, but Victoria Police says no formal complaint of trespass – required for them to go in and remove the protesters – has been made.

Protesters, meanwhile, have renamed the Arts West building Mahmoud Hall – in honour of Palestinian student Mahmoud Alnaouq, who they say intended to study at Melbourne University on a scholarship this year but was killed alongside 19 family members in Gaza on October 20.

Luca said the protest could only continue because of support from other students and staff, especially as the semester draws to a close and exams loom. On Friday night, students from the university’s veterinary school in Werribee delivered pizza. Others brought instant noodles.

To those who argue students should be focused only on their studies, Luca said it was the university taking part in “activism” by partnering with the defence industry.

“The students and staff here aren’t asking for the University of Melbourne to solve everything happening in Palestine. I want to be thriving in my degree — but I also want to know that while I’m doing that, the money I contribute to the university is not complicit in weapons manufacturing.”

Despite a renewed warning from the university it could send in the police on Thursday night, there was no sign of a police presence on campus on Friday. On Saturday, the building was quiet as the students caught up on eight hours of sleep for the first time since the sit-in started earlier this week.

About two dozen tents remained in the entry and mezzanine levels, where protest banners decrying the violence in Gaza and Palestinian flags hang on the walls and windows. A group of female students got ready for the day in a bathroom about 9.45am, while others slept inside the tents and sleeping bags laid out on the floor.

Three police officers strolled by half an hour later to check on the encampment. The officers did not venture inside the building but stopped briefly to exchange information with a trio of security guards stationed outside.

Just before noon, the students delivered breakfast and food supplies to those camped inside the building, whose main plan for the day focused on holding the fort.

The university cancelled classes in the Arts West building for a third straight day on Friday, forcing it to reschedule 247 classes affecting more than 8300 students, and disabled its sliding doors.

Not all students support the protests, though.

Victorian Liberal Party deputy leader David Southwick attended the university on Friday to meet a number of Jewish students who he said felt intimidated and harassed by the protesters.

Those students did not want to speak to media. But their concerns included signs calling for an “intifada” – an Arabic word for uprising, which is associated with periods of civil disobedience in the occupied Palestinian territories but also deadly violence targeting Israeli civilians – and chanting of the contested pro-Palestine slogan, “from the river to the sea”, which they see as a call for Israel’s destruction.

Deputy Opposition Leader David Southwick said police should move the protesters on.

“If students don’t feel safe on campus, then I think the police do need to step in,” said Southwick, who is Jewish. As he was speaking, a masked protester stood behind him with a sign saying that “the Nakba never ended” — a reference to the “catastrophe” that saw more than half the Palestinian population displaced when the State of Israel was established in 1948.

“I’m standing here with this guy with his face covered — I don’t feel terribly safe right now,” Southwick said.

Southwick on Saturday shared a letter from a Jewish student who didn’t want to be identified for fear of harassment; The Sunday Age has confirmed he is a student at the university and authored the letter. It asked the university administration how it could tolerate “a most pernicious form of hatred that has taken root on your campus”, starting just days after the October 7 attacks by Hamas.

“Under your leadership, populist antisemitic narratives have flourished, and you are complicit,” the student wrote. “I should be mourning my loved ones and dedicating myself to my academic passions. Instead, here I am, forced to explain to you your roles as leaders of the academic community in protecting minority students at Melbourne University from daily doses of racism.”

Mercedes Scott, a third-year history student at the university taking part in the Arts West sit-in, said the protesters included Jewish students, and the camp had hosted Shabbat Friday prayers.

Scott and other protest organisers did not dispute claims that they had been joined by protesters who were neither students nor staff at the University of Melbourne. The 21-year-old said she was following a long line of university protesters who railed against the Vietnam War and South Africa’s apartheid regime, and had “always been on the right side of history”.

The university says the protester camp “presents a significant safety risk to our students and staff members, and has resulted in damage to university property”. But for now, their actions pale in comparison to campus conflict of years past.

In 1974, about 200 Melbourne University students agitating for on-campus childcare facilities barricaded the vice chancellor in his office with a concrete and wooden barrier for more than seven hours until the police came to his rescue.

In 1989, students smashed windows and kicked down doors as they forced their way into an administrative building to protest against the introduction of HECS payments.

It’s too early to say whether this stand-off will escalate into that kind of violence. But neither side is backing down.

Protest organisers said on Friday afternoon that university management had met them and flatly rejected their demands. The students, buoyed by nearly 200 university staff who signed an open letter of support, say they aren’t going anywhere.

“They have threatened academic discipline so I am putting my undergraduate degree on the line here, but I don’t see any other option if the university continues its silence,” Scott said.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.