Coming back from chaos at universities

The summer is always a good time for a pause for students, teachers and administrators in California’s schools, from kindergarten through the higher education of the University of California and California State University systems.

This summer in particular, that pause at the UC and CSU has meant a couple of months to regroup and regain campus calm and order after the vast tent encampments populated by students and, well, others protesting the United States’ involvement, tacitly and otherwise, in the Israel-Hamas war.

Now, with back-to-school thoughts in mind as August approaches, is the time for university administrators to prepare for a fall semester in which legitimate protest and free speech is very much allowed on their campuses, as they have been since the heyday of the Free Speech Movement in the early 1960s, but encampments on university property are very much not.

Some of the tent cities that grew on California campuses were orderly and well-handled by protesters and campus police alike.

Still, there were disruptions to normal student life.

But others, especially in the mayhem that was UCLA through the spring, saw huge disorder culminating in a violent clash between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli forces that was poorly handled by an overly late and laissez-faire response by police that endangered lives.

Classes were canceled or made virtual.

Commencement events were victims to the chaos.

Same went for Cal Poly Humboldt, where there was violence as well.

“I am confident that encampments won’t be tolerated,” UC Regent Rich Leib told the Los Angeles Times last week. “I’m confident the regents feel we need to enforce the rules.”

New, as-yet-unannounced guidelines “will assume the immediate removal of any encampment,” one anonymous senior UC administrator said.

That’s the right approach as the public universities gear up for their jobs of providing safe learning environments for California’s students without chaos on the campus.

Protesting is one thing. Disrupting access to an education is another. Clear and simple rules can and should be enforced to protect the former and prohibit the latter.