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Q&A
Brooklyn College protest: CUNY's response and decision-making process
1:27:36
·
4 min
Council Member Eric Dinowitz inquires about CUNY's handling of a recent protest at Brooklyn College, including the decision to involve campus police and potential costs. Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez explains the university's approach to balancing freedom of expression with campus safety and details the events that led to calling the NYPD.
- CUNY values freedom of expression but aims to prevent discrimination, harassment, and safety risks
- The protest escalated when tents were set up, raising concerns about a potential encampment
- CUNY staff attempted to de-escalate the situation before involving NYPD
- No significant property damage or costs were reported from this protest
Eric Dinowitz
1:27:36
And and on this topic, lastly, of course, we there was another protest at Brooklyn College where campus safety were involved, police were involved.
1:27:49
Can you, one, just talk about, you know, the steps leading up to the the decision to call campus police, the time between the start of the protest and that?
1:27:58
And, of course, as you had testified last year when there was a protest at City College, it was it was testified that that cost $3,000,000 in damage.
1:28:12
Can you share if there were any costs associated with this recent protest, and if so, how much they were?
Félix Matos Rodríguez
1:28:18
So let me begin by the last part of your question.
1:28:22
I mean, to to my knowledge, right, that we haven't I haven't received any information from Brooklyn College about any cause or any destruction of property or things of that nature as a result of the protest last Thursday Brooklyn.
1:28:42
Again, we are, you know, we we are an educational institution, and we value people's freedom of expression.
1:28:51
And that's part of our democratic system and and people being able to voice their opinions.
1:28:57
And we want them to be done in a way that is consistent with the norms and procedures that we have set in every campus for that to be done.
1:29:05
And even if it's done in a passionate way, that is done in a way that doesn't infringe on anybody else's right or creates a sense of discrimination or harassment.
1:29:14
And those are our overarching values.
1:29:17
Right?
1:29:17
In the case of the Brooklyn College situation, it was an event that was supposed to occur in another venue and was moved to that part of the quad at Brooklyn College.
1:29:34
They were exercising their right to comment right on different things on the campus and fire demands and other things.
1:29:47
Attends went up.
1:29:49
And we've made very clear to the campus community that that is a signal that maybe an encampment might be getting organized and that we have no tolerance for that.
1:30:01
We share that.
1:30:03
The Brooklyn College staff share that with the individuals there.
1:30:08
We actually tried to remove some of the tents with our public safety personnel.
1:30:13
They were blocked and impeded by the folks who were there.
1:30:17
And the college continue sort of what is standard procedure in terms of trying to de escalate, right, the protest there.
1:30:29
The protesters insisted in keeping tents and some of those things.
1:30:34
And as the day progressed, we had some concerns about the overall safety if those individuals decided not to leave, right?
1:30:44
Which was something that consistently we asked them to do with numerous warnings from the team at Brooklyn College.
1:30:55
And so, when we were concerned that it was getting late and that potentially these individuals might want to stay longer, make an encampment, stay overnight.
1:31:08
Some of the other things that we have learned from campuses across the country is that, you know, when you have a situation like an encampment or people that want to stay overnight in campus property, you also have the chance of people then wanting to go into buildings and take over additional space and really create a much more complicated safety situation for everybody involved.
1:31:33
A lot more disruptive, right, if they get into a building.
1:31:37
And, that's when the decision was made to call the NYPD and assist in the clearing of the protest.