By Scott Ross

On the morning of Saturday, April 27, 2024 the Instagram account of a collective at Washington University in St. Louis posted a message proclaiming “WASHU IS EVERYWHERE” in bold, red text. Seeking to preempt the reactionary trope of outside agitators invading the campus’s hilltop enclave on the city’s edge, these students argued that “there is nowhere on Earth ‘outside’ of Washington University” due to the global reach of the university and its decades-old defense industry entanglements as well as the university’s outsized influence on the economy of St. Louis. The students put forth an inclusive narrative of citywide and international solidarity, inviting others to join a common struggle.

In advance of a protest against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and WashU’s complicity through ties to war-profiteer Boeing—the third such protest in as many weeks—student organizers encouraged the local community to join them. For those living and working in the shadow of WashU, those dependent on WashU as healthcare provider, those displaced by WashU’s endless landgrabs and gentrification, those moved to stop the endless bombing of hospitals and universities in Gaza, there could be no “outside” of the university.

Within hours, WashU police violently arrested over 100 people to clear a nascent Gaza solidarity encampment. I was one of them. As I was released from jail that night—with notice in hand that I was indefinitely banned from my own campus—university administrators sent an e-mail decrying the protests, adding specifically that organizers “put out a call for more people, including those not affiliated with the university, to come to campus to join their demonstration.” In the administration’s eyes, it was this invitation to outsiders that, much like the presence of tents or chants for Palestinian liberation, made the protest dangerous.

The following Monday, university Chancellor Andrew Martin doubled down on this narrative, emphasizing repeatedly that “the majority of this group were not WashU students, faculty, or staff”—conveniently forgetting about the university’s alumni and denying any relationship with the city’s residents and students at neighboring institutions. His letter was a diatribe against the action, declaring disruptive protest unacceptable. “We will not permit students and faculty, and we certainly will not permit outside interests, to take over Washington University property,” he warned. “We cannot allow this type of behavior on our campus.” He closed with an ominous declaration: “You will not do this here.”

That same day, I was suspended along with five other faculty. By the end of the week, the university erected a massive fence around part of campus—the part that faces St. Louis city. An administrator sat in on my office hours; I was locked out of my e-mails after I submitted grades. For two months, the university told faculty, students, and staff close to nothing. At the time, I wondered whether the administration considered us unaffiliated with the university. Perhaps we had become outsiders.

We were eventually informed of conduct charges and most suspensions were lifted by summer’s end. Graduating students had their degrees withheld until September, continuing students received probations that came with the threat of punishment for any future conduct violations, and at least one student still faces charges a year later. In the meantime, faculty attempts to investigate the administration’s response to the protests were obstructed and undermined by the Board of Trustees, with the Board Chair implying that faculty were unqualified and biased to conduct such an investigation, putting shared governance into question. Who gets to run the university? In this instance, support for free speech, solidarity with embattled students and colleagues, even concern for university governance were not tolerated. Of course, the university eventually exonerated itself, finding that its response to protests was justified. In the year since the protest, our chancellor has vowed that campuses must not allow disruptive protest and that universities must not be political in the face of attacks on higher ed—equating anti-war demands for change with Trump’s campaign to eviscerate universities. Refusing to recognize politics in the university as an institution is saying that students cannot imagine a better university, that the campus community has no right to demand change. We are not the university, we merely inhabit it. To the contrary, as a group of Occupy Cal activists fifteen years ago declared: the university belongs to those who use it.

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In some ways, WashU’s response last year was typical in a spring during which university after university responded to campus pro-Palestine activism with excessive police violence, over 3,000 arrests, suspensions, evictions from student housing, firings, the withholding of degrees, collective punishment, false accusations of violence and anti-Semitism, and more. In many cases, however, administrators at least pretended to tolerate the protests at first, dangling the possibility of negotiation or de-escalation before unleashing force. At WashU, the police lines formed as the tents were erected and advanced soon after. One of the largest mass arrests related to Gaza campus activism since the current genocide began occurred before tents were even occupied. The whole ordeal lasted less than four hours.

By its own admission when pressed by the Faculty Senate, the administration went into that day refusing to let an encampment stand, no matter how peaceful it was. In this way, WashU’s pre-emptive, collective, excessive response helped normalize the use of mass arrests over dialogue (in fact, a professor who offered to mediate between students and the administration was suspended for doing so). Through these actions, the administration simultaneously entrenched the divide between the campus and so-called “outsiders” and punished those in the campus community who dared to oppose the university, effectively exiling us. Contrasting student narratives of solidarity, university administrators insist that there is in fact an inside and an outside of the university—and if you speak out, you’ll be cast out

The student declaration that “WashU is everywhere,” that there is no outside of the university, is worth taking seriously not only because it anticipated the administration’s obsession with outside agitation but because it reflects the conditions of WashU’s presence in St. Louis. WashU is one of the largest employers, land-owners, and care providers in St. Louis and exerts significant influence in the region, affecting even those who have never set foot on campus. Though the current chancellor vowed that the university would be “in and for St. Louis” and has taken steps to make the university more accessible to the city and region,