The pro-Palestinian encampment on the campus of UCLA May 1. Law enforcement dismantled it early the next day. Photo by Etienne Laurent/AFP via Getty Images

By Louis Keene May 2, 2024

Four University of California, Los Angeles, student journalists say they were attacked by pro-Israel protesters Wednesday as they left the scene of a melee they were covering outside the school’s pro-Palestinian encampment.

Two reporters for the student newspaper, the Daily Bruin, have described being pummeled by a group of protesters led by a man who had confronted them earlier in the night. One of the journalists, UCLA junior Catherine Hamilton, was taken to the hospital with injuries.

Hamilton, an editor, said she encountered the pro-Israel group at around 3:30 a.m., not long after she and the three others left the encampment on foot. She told the Los Angeles Times that the man told his group to surround the reporters, and that when she began to break free, they pushed her to the ground and beat her for about a minute.

Daily Bruin reporter Christopher Buchanan told CalMatters the assault happened within earshot of California Highway Patrol officers who were on site to respond to violence instigated at the encampment by pro-Israel counterprotesters. But he said the officers did not stop the attack.

He said he emerged with bad bruises on his body and face, but no internal injuries.

“After I was struck and debilitated, I was surrounded by four to seven counterprotesters who proceeded to punch and kick my head and torso for thirty seconds to a minute,” Buchanan said.

Daily Bruin reporter Shaanth Kodialam, who uses they/them pronouns, said they and a fourth-year Daily Bruin photographer were shoved and pepper sprayed as they came to their colleagues’ aid.

Kodialam said they alerted an officer from either local police or campus security — they weren’t sure which; both were on campus at the time — but that the officer told them he couldn’t help.

The Los Angeles Police Department directed questions to the university police, which did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did the office of university Chancellor Gene Block. No arrests have been made in the incident.

The alleged attack adds to the picture of an ugly scene that unfolded at the UCLA encampment the night before law enforcement heeded Block’s calls to dismantle it. Most accounts of the violence assert that it was initiated by pro-Israel agitators who tried to storm the encampment not long after the conclusion of the Passover holiday.

The Jewish Federation of Los Angeles called the violence “shameful.” Block in a statement described it as “dark chapter in our campus’s history.”

It was unclear how many of the hundreds of pro-Israel counterprotesters who descended on the encampment late Tuesday night were affiliated with the school, if any. Many did not look college-aged.

In an interview, Kodialam, a UCLA junior, said they got a brief look at the assailants and that they looked older than college students.

“A lot of people in that crowd were not students,” Kodialam said.

A May 1 post on the UCLA Reddit page describes an attack on a group of people on UCLA’s campus at around 3:30 a.m. that seems similar to the journalists’ account. The post describes “a group of counterprotesters well above college age surround a group of girls, jeering and threatening to tie them up.”

“Police were in earshot, literally twenty feet away, and did nothing,” reads the post, whose author did not respond to a request for comment. “The guy was being kicked and brutalized by like five people and nobody stepped in to help. Another girl in that group was sprayed and blinded — again, for no reason at all. She was sobbing afterwards.”

As student encampments and the efforts to clear them have drawn national attention in recent weeks, UCLA appeared to be taking a different tack from other universities which dismantled them shortly after they were erected. Block did not call for its removal until Tuesday, five days after its initial setup.

The Daily Bruin staff, whose coverage has been cited regularly by local and national journalists covering the encampment, remained undaunted. They sent several more reporters to cover the encampment’s clearing the next night. 

And at least one said the incident had reinforced his interest in a journalism career.

“I do this work because I love serving the communities our paper strives to take care of,” Kodialam, 21, said. “Anytime that’s challenged, I see that as an opportunity to become a stronger reporter.”

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