CHICAGO, April 29 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of University of Chicago (UChicago) students set up an encampment in the center of the campus on Monday, joining groups on over 100 university campuses across the United States in support of Palestinians.
Other universities in Illinois have also set up encampments in recent days, including Northwestern University (NU) on April 25 and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign on April 26.
The students called on the universities to divest from companies doing business with Israel or manufacturing weapons. UChicago protesters also want more money allocated to education and housing on the South Side.
UChicago police department officers were present at the event, and did not intervene in the setting up of the encampment.
NU administrators abruptly changed campus policies and ban tents or other temporary structures in common areas on Thursday. NU President Michael Schill informed students of the policy change in an email sent just after 9 a.m. Thursday, saying that students in violation of the new policy risk suspension, expulsion or criminal charges.
But by that time, a small encampment had been erected on the Evanston campus, local media reported.
NU school administrators, nevertheless, have done very little to enforce the rule. Campus officials spent much of Thursday negotiating with the demonstrators, hammering out guidelines that would allow for free speech while preventing the kind of protests that have roiled universities across the country.
Protest encampments have popped up in the past week at many university campuses across the United States, including Harvard, Brown, the University of Michigan and the University of Texas at Austin. New York's Columbia University has been the epicenter of the large movement in recent days. Demonstrators have clashed with police at several universities.
