Anti-Israel tent encampment at Harvard University was briefly stopped overnight after heavy sprinklers went off at 2 a.m.
Sprinklers suddenly went off in the middle of the Ivy League’s Cambridge campus, jolting dozens of sleeping protesters awake.
“As protesters spend their first night at Harvard University’s encampment, the greatest threat to their stay comes not from administrators or Harvard police officers, but from the yard’s sprinklers,” the newspaper said. Stated. harvard crimson The student-led newspaper reported early Thursday morning.
The first sprinklers went off just outside the Harvard Yard encampment around 2:30 a.m., when the temperature dropped to 36 degrees.
Just before 4 a.m., sprinklers installed in the center of the tent began spraying water, and students hurriedly began handing out buckets.
“Two additional sprinklers were activated at the edge of the encampment near Massachusetts Hall,” the newspaper said in a 4:05 a.m. live blog update.
“After the sprinklers started hitting the tents at the edge of the camp, protesters ran over, covered the sprinklers with buckets and sat on them.”
More than a dozen tents appeared at the $79,500-a-year university on Wednesday after a rally to protest the university’s suspension of Harvard’s Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee.
Seeking to get ahead of planned protests that have already disrupted Columbia University and New York University, Harvard University locked most gates to its famous grounds ahead of Monday’s classes, restricting access only to students with student IDs. was restricted.
The school also posted signs warning people against setting up tents or tables on campus without permission.
No arrests had been made as of Thursday.
It comes as anti-Israel protests have intensified on university campuses over the past week.
In Colombia, more than 100 protesters were taken away in handcuffs when New York City police were brought in to destroy an encampment.
New York University students later set up an encampment, which was also demolished and more than 100 people were arrested.
