LOS ANGELES — The president of California State University, Los Angeles, said demonstrators protesting Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza are no longer welcome on campus after some of them occupied and trashed a building while she was inside.
The takeover ended early Thursday without arrests, a school spokesperson said.
Protesters barricaded the multistory Student Services Building at 4 p.m. Wednesday with university President Berenecea Johnson Eanes and dozens of other employees inside, said spokesperson Erik Frost Hollins.
Most of the 58 employees got out by 6 p.m. except for a group of administrators who remained until after midnight to manage the situation. The group included Eanes, but Frost Hollins would not say whether the president interacted with the protesters.
''That falls under tactics that we are not discussing at this point,'' the spokesperson said.
Most of the protesters left the building around 1:15 a.m. Thursday and returned to an encampment on the campus. A few remaining protesters left when university police ordered them out, Frost Hollins said.
In a statement Thursday afternoon to the school community, Eanes said she has engaged with protesters who have occupied the campus encampment for some 40 days.
''So long as the encampment remained non-violent, I was committed that the university would continue to talk,'' the president wrote. But in the wake of destruction and theft that occurred Wednesday, a line was crossed and ''those in the encampment must leave.''
