On April 26, four days after pro-Palestinian protesters began occupying a building at California State Polytechnic University-Humboldt, campus officials seemed to throw up their hands: They closed the institution for the rest of the semester.
The unpredictable situation and continued break-ins, vandalism, and theft by protesters made it difficult to reopen other buildings, the university said in a campus alert.
As some faculty members saw it, the administration’s message was a mistake.
In an email to the president’s chief of staff that afternoon, the chair of the physics and astronomy department said the notice — one of several emails that called attention to protesters’ alleged criminal activity — likely reversed days of negotiations between faculty, administrators, and students as they tried to reach a peaceful resolution.
“Please stop,” Monty Mola, the department chair, wrote to Mark Johnson, the chief of staff. “We were literally almost to the finish line when that came out. If you want to send out notifications, for God sake find out if it undermines efforts that are going on. We all want those kids out safely. Please be a part of that effort.”
Johnson replied that he would’ve appreciated Mola’s feedback before the faculty voted no confidence in him and the president, Tom Jackson, and called for their removal. “That was a significant breach of trust that will be very difficult to repair,” Johnson wrote.
Mola and Johnson’s testy exchange is part of hundreds of emails provided to The Chronicle in response to a public-records request about the administration’s handling of an eight-day occupation that eventually covered two buildings. The conversations portray a faculty that largely felt as though the administration did not understand its own student body and a leadership team that believed its instructors were getting in the way of ending an ugly protest.
Tom Jackson, the university’s president, announced in July that he would step down in August, capping off a five-year tenure which was, until April, hallmarked by the university’s transition to a Cal Poly.
As colleges ramp up for a fall term that will likely bring more protests over the Israel-Hamas war, faculty members who support a long leash for student activists will make their voices heard. Campus leaders will have to decide how to respond.
‘Super Frustrating’
Mola and James Woglom, the chair of the university senate, told The Chronicle that once the email closing campus for the next two weeks arrived, protesters canceled a planned set of negotiations with faculty leaders and the provost.
“It’s super frustrating, because basically those kids were ready to go,” Mola said. “And as soon as that thing hit, bam, they were dug back in.” The occupation began in Siemens Hall, which includes the president’s office; it later expanded to the neighboring Nelson Hall East.
A spokeswoman for the university said administrators and faculty members continued to talk with protesters throughout the occupation.
The protest was eventually cleared on April 30 by police officers, who arrested 32 people, including 13 students. Charges included unlawful assembly, vandalism, conspiracy, and assault of police officers.
The Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office has since dropped charges against 27 people arrested during or after the occupation at Cal Poly Humboldt. The district attorney told the Mercury News that the university’s police department submitted 39 referrals to her office, which sent the remaining 12 back for further investigation. There were three arrests on April 22 and four on May 1.
It was administrators’ decision to summon law enforcement on the 22nd, the first day of the protest, that prompted faculty members’ no-confidence vote. According to faculty advocates, that decision showed a disregard for the campus’s culture and past experiences with activism.
In response to the email from Johnson, the chief of staff, about the vote of no confidence, Mola wrote: “That the president has been here 5 years and still doesn’t understand the campus appears willful. Either that or he does understand the campus and views our students and faculty cynically, which is worse.”
In reply, Johnson defended the university’s response and skewered the Humboldt faculty for leading young adults to believe “that their cause justifies this criminal activity, and that there should be no consequences for their actions.”
“What are you teaching them?” Johnson wrote. “That they can go through life inflicting harm on others with no consequences? This illegal occupation has nothing whatsoever to do with free speech, freedom of inquiry or assembly. This is rampant lawlessness that is sullying the reputation of this school and draining resources from achievement of our purpose.”
Cal Poly Humboldt, which was known as Humboldt State University from 1974 to 2022, has a long history of student protests, including against the Vietnam War.
In 2015, students staged a sit-in at Humboldt’s Native American Forum for a week to protest the dismissal of the chair of the Indian Natural Resource Science and Engineering Program. The 2024 protest was attached to demands that the university disclose investments in Israel, divest from companies supporting the occupation of Palestine, break ties with Israeli universities, and call for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.
“The history of the campus up until this particular and, to me, tragic event has been one where protests have had administrators that have listened to them, worked with them, tried to find compromises, and has resulted in little [if] any damage to the campus,” said Guy Aronoff, a retired history professor at the university. “That’s the sad thing with this one here.”
In conversations with The Chronicle and in their emails, faculty members emphasized that students participating in the protest were doing what they thought was right, even if they made some poor decisions. They pushed back against the framing of the protesters as lawless criminals or outside agitators.
“The way the immediate response proceeded was as if these students were strangers, and they were making intentional decisions to commit crimes,” said Stephanie Burkhalter, a professor of politics and former chair of the university senate. “From our point of view, they were not strangers. They were well-known. And they were participating in an action that is consistent with what our campus has done around social-justice issues.”
On April 28, Burkhalter jumped on Mola and Johnson’s thread to suggest that the university needed to better incorporate faculty perspectives in its crisis response. Without insight from those who understood the campus’s history, “you might make errors in judgment that will escalate the situation and end badly for all sides, despite your best intentions,” Burkhalter wrote on behalf of a group of current and former faculty leaders.
“These were students that the faculty knew deeply,” Burkhalter told The Chronicle. “The prospect of seeing law enforcement dragging these students out of the building was alarming and had faculty on edge.”
Safety Issues
From the administration’s standpoint, the bottom line was that the occupiers were breaking numerous laws, putting campus safety at risk, and causing a chaotic end to the spring term. It was difficult to work with the protesters because there were not defined leaders, one message from the university said.
Indeed, Cal Poly Humboldt’s protest escalated further than concurrent ones nationwide, which mostly stayed outdoors. Other building occupations related to the war, such as those at Pomona College and Columbia University, did not last nearly as long, and the damage at Humboldt — where buildings were tagged with graffiti inside and out — is estimated to be near $2 million. The closest corollary may be Portland State University, where pro-Palestinian activists occupied a library for several days in April and May. A spokeswoman there told The Chronicle on Friday that the damage will cost $1.1 million to repair.
Communications between members of the president’s cabinet suggest they felt the situation was becoming increasingly dangerous and had to be stopped.
On April 24, the university’s special assistant to the president for tribal relations and community engagement, Adrienne Colegrove-Raymond, responded to an email from a student who distributed a faculty petition condemning the administration’s handling of the protest.
“If you know any students currently in Siemens Hall we encourage them to take the protest outside of the building as soon as possible,” Colegrove-Raymond wrote. “While peaceful protests are powerful and important, the safety of students is of the utmost importance.”
Two days later, Colegrove-Raymond wrote to a university email list for Native American students to say that while she supported the protest, it had forced the closure of Indigenous students’ dedicated gathering space.
“This is very frustrating, since we know how often you utilize the space and also benefit from the computer lab, meals,” and camaraderie, Colegrove-Raymond wrote.
On April 28, she replied to an email from an alum who was critical of the administration’s treatment of protesters.
“Unfortunately occupying buildings and defacing property are not protected” by the First Amendment, Colegrove-Raymond wrote. “I have been without an office since Monday, so I am using my phone, so I apologize for the brief message.”
Some emails, including the chief of staff’s exchange with the physics department’s chair, also suggested that administrators saw faculty members as a bad influence on students.
“You must understand that the behavior of this faculty, outside of the little echo chamber that we live in, is seen as shameful and harmful to our students,” Johnson wrote to Mola. “Your condemnation of a school president in the midst of this crisis has put you at odds with the larger community and called into question your competence as teachers of young people.”
Timothy R. Cain, a professor of higher education at the University of Georgia and scholar of campus activism, told The Chronicle most people on campuses recognize that faculty have little influence over students’ convictions. This narrative, he said, is more common as a conservative talking point.
“Faculty are lucky if students are learning what they’re supposed to be learning in terms of content, in terms of methods, in terms of literature,” Cain said. “To think that they are successfully also changing students’ political beliefs around specific issues is reaching. But that doesn’t mean that the narrative isn’t there.”
After the release of an April 28 statement on how the protesters’ building takeover went beyond free speech and disrupted students’ education, Paula J. Petersen, a presidential aide, wrote to the vice president for university advancement and the marketing director with high praise.
“Because they cannot handle the truth,” she said, appearing to refer to faculty members, “I’m sure the people out there who refuse to accept responsibility for the actions of themselves or the occupiers who they are choosing to defend, will have an insane and ludicrous response. But who cares, I’m guessing everyone else will appreciate this message as much as I have!”
Cal Poly Humboldt declined requests for interviews with officials whose emails The Chronicle received. A spokeswoman said in a written statement that the university will hold sessions in the fall for students to learn more about their civil rights and for staff members to discuss civil discourse.
Locked Down
The university announced in May a new plan for the summer that would have most buildings on campus locked at all times. The spokeswoman said the university is planning to adjust the program for the upcoming academic year based on feedback it has received over the last several months.
Burkhalter, the politics professor, said she hopes to see an external investigation of the university’s response to the April occupations.
“We need an independent review to make sure that this doesn’t happen again,” Burkhalter said. “If you ask what the mood is, it’s apprehension. Because until there’s a ceasefire, I don’t think these students are going to stand down.”
Asked whether any independent investigations of the university’s response were planned, the Cal Poly spokeswoman wrote that the university is “assessing and refining” how it responds to emergencies.
As for healing divides between administrators and faculty, Cain said it’s best to develop “shared understandings” before a campus goes into crisis. But for those that are already past that point, he said, there are glimmers of hope — including the University of Missouri at Columbia’s chancellor, who improved his relationship with the faculty after a searing performance review.
“It does take work, it does take listening, it does take working to establish trust,” Cain said. “And that’s not a transactional thing.”
