When Are Student Occupations Criminal Acts?
Even in the wake of recent criticism of the University of California’s use of violence to break up nonviolent demonstrations, one fact has gone largely unquestioned — that student occupations are unlawful, and may be properly ended by police.
Across the Atlantic in Britain, however, the opposite belief prevails. There, student occupations are considered lawful unless a court specifically rules otherwise, and an attempt by one university to declare all occupations presumptively unlawful is meeting with growing criticism.
One of the biggest universities in the UK has obtained a high court injunction that criminalises all
