Police presence has elevated on the College of Pennsylvania campus on Thursday, with Philadelphia police and college police carefully monitoring the realm. A number of officers are standing at a distance with zip ties readily available, however are principally maintaining a tally of the barricades across the encampment.
It has been seven days since college officers mentioned that the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus violated college insurance policies, warning that protesters ought to disband.
Over the course of the multi-day protest, campus officers and law enforcement officials have always eliminated indicators and graffiti from the Benjamin Franklin statue on Faculty Inexperienced, erecting boundaries round it to maintain protesters out.
There has solely been one minor confrontation between campus police and protesters. The incident, which didn’t lead to any arrests, occurred when a gaggle of protesters jumped over a number of boundaries and commenced chanting on and across the Benjamin Franklin statue.
Quickly after, officers expanded the boundaries across the protesters. Philadelphia’s District Legal professional Larry Krasner got here by the encampment for a 3rd time at this time and spoke briefly to media.
“What I’ve seen over three completely different days of coming by has been peaceable — what I’ve seen has gotten louder, at this time is definitely louder,” mentioned Krasner. “As long as it doesn’t cross the road into prison conduct, it’s not my concern.”
This morning, a group of scholars, alumni and different folks “affiliated with Penn” mentioned they delivered a petition to the administration signed by 3,200 folks, calling for the college to comply with via on disbanding the encampment.
For about two hours members of this group counterprotested, waving Israeli and American flags. At one level, each teams have been shouting forwards and backwards at one another. Many of the pro-Israeli counterprotesters have since left, although some stay.
