LOS ANGELES >> When Lawrence Sung returned to USC this week, he found a campus completely different from the one he had known over the past three years.

Instead of open gates for public access, students lined up and waited for staff to scan their IDs. Inside, new signs warn of possible “secondary screening” and “bags and personal items subject to inspection.”

Tall black fences cordon off parts of Alumni Park, the heart of campus and the site of the Source’s pro-Palestinian encampments. Students are allowed to enter the park, where they usually rest under shade trees, through designated entrances and exits.

“It’s over the top,” said Sung, a senior studying international relations and global business who has never protested himself. “It feels like a fortress that closes itself off from the community.”

Over the last academic year, college campuses across the country were roiled and divided by competing rallies between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups, accusations of anti-Semitic and anti-Palestinian bias, and tensions over an antiwar movement that advocates for the withdrawal of funds from Israel. Presidents were unsure how to respond to a series of fortified protest camps, many of which were only broken up when police were called to make arrests — thousands across the country.

Now governments are cracking down as ongoing protests against the war between Israel and Hamas, which could be exacerbated by a divisive presidential election, may become even more violent.

“They’ve given us a big job: to keep the protesters out,” said a recent check-in employee at USC, which is also installing a new permanent gate at McClintock Avenue, a main entrance to campus. “That’s our main job,” said the employee, who did not give his name because he was not authorized to speak to reporters.

At all California colleges and universities – including the University of California with ten campuses and the California State University with 23 campuses – school administrators want to strictly enforce rules of conduct: There will be zero tolerance for tent camps and violations of protest guidelines, rules that have been enforced inconsistently at many institutions.

That’s not all.

More security officers on campus

At Pomona College, where classes began Monday, a new rule prohibits entry to buildings without a college ID card year-round, not just during the summer as before. Campus security officers are stationed in the Alexander Hall administration building to control who is allowed in after police arrested pro-Palestinian students who occupied the president’s office there last year.

In a recent campus-wide message, students were warned that setting up tent camps — like the one on the graduation stage in May that prompted Pomona to move its graduation ceremony to the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles — could result in “detention and arrest by police.”

The college has also hired new campus security officers — a sergeant and four officers — to patrol Pomona exclusively. They join the more than 30 campus security staff and officers shared by the Claremont Colleges, a consortium of five undergraduate colleges and two graduate colleges, of which Pomona is the oldest.

Student activists feel excluded.

“They will gladly arrest you again,” said a recent Instagram post from the pro-Palestinian group Pomona Divest from Apartheid. “They are lashing out because it works,” the post said, referring to the organization’s protests. The group has participated in several protests, including one in which keffiyeh-clad students left graduation dinners in the dean’s dorm and a “rally against repression” before the graduation ceremony on Tuesday.

Protests begin

One such test will take place on Thursday, when Bay Area students at UC Berkeley, San Jose State University, San Francisco State University and the University of San Francisco plan to hold coordinated protests on their campuses.

For students who have tried unsuccessfully to pressure administrators to reduce their investments in Israel-linked weapons companies, the focus will be on gathering crowds as large as those seen in the spring. For the administrators, these first protests will test their stated zero tolerance for tent camps – if they are set up – and, in the case of the UC, rules prohibiting the wearing of face masks to conceal one’s identity and blocking entrances to buildings will be put to the test.

Protests broke out at USC on Thursday as students gathered outside the Coliseum during graduation. The event is normally held at Alumni Park but was moved to the stadium, where security measures such as a clear bag policy and metal detectors were in place.

About 9,100 students, parents, faculty and staff attended the celebration. Outside, students held signs reading “USC Funds Genocide” and “Long Live the Student Intifada.” About two dozen activists, many of whom were part of the spring camp, showed up, a smaller crowd than the hundreds who protested in the spring.

Many of the largest universities, including all UC campuses except Berkeley and Merced, still have weeks to go before the fall semester begins in late September. That includes UCLA, where police arrested 206 protesters while clearing an encampment on May 2, two days after a violent mob attacked pro-Palestinian activists while police were slow to respond. The brawl led to the firing of UCLA’s police chief and the creation of a new campus security office.

In addition to UC President Michael Drake’s orders to strictly adhere to protest guidelines, UCLA is also subject to a court order regarding its handling of pro-Palestinian protests.

Three Jewish students had filed a lawsuit against the university, claiming that the administration failed to protect their right to equal access to campus during protests in the spring. In the suit, the students accused UCLA of knowingly tolerating an encampment that they said blocked passage of pro-Israel Jews. This month, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order ordering UCLA “not to deny Jewish students access to the campus or participate in such a ban.”

There was no agreement among the university, the plaintiffs, and student and academic activists as to whether such discrimination occurred. However, UCLA withdrew its appeal of the injunction and said it would abide by the injunction while the case proceeds in court.

The UC also faces a new challenge from the UAW 4811 union, which represents 48,000 academic staff on its campuses. The union is demanding that the UC meet to negotiate its “unilateral change” in protest policy. The camping ban is not new. The ban on covering one’s face to conceal one’s identity while committing a crime is a state law that has been publicly posted on signs on some campuses. As part of this policy, it has been incorporated into the campus rules of all UC campuses.

Debate about anti-Semitism

The Jewish Faculty Resilience Group, an official faculty association at UCLA, praised Drake’s order.

The university system “must ensure that all people – regardless of religion, nationality or belief and other legally protected categories, including Jews and Zionists – can work, learn and live on campus without experiencing exclusion, discrimination and intimidation,” the group said in a statement.

But Benjamin Kersten, a UCLA graduate student who attended the camp, said the restrictions upset him.

“The idea of ​​Jewish security is being used again to enact measures that require a stronger police presence. This is one of the reasons why I and many of my peers have been exposed to violence and are now also endangering public health,” said Kersten, who is active in the pro-Palestinian Jewish organization Jewish Voice for Peace and studies art history.

“The university is responding authoritatively to political dissent. … We need fairer and more democratic investment practices. That is the crux of the matter, and that is how the university is responding.”

Tensions continue at USC

Similar debates have also taken place at USC, where pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian movements have clashed in parallel protests and verbal clashes since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.

Tensions rose after the university withdrew Asna Tabassum’s opportunity to speak at the graduation ceremony. The valedictorian had been accused of anti-Semitism by pro-Israel groups for using a pro-Palestinian link on her Instagram profile.

Citing unspecified security concerns, USC later canceled the university-wide graduation ceremony entirely. Instead, fences and metal detectors were installed around campus during dozens of smaller graduation events.

For those who were at USC back then, the current security measures feel more lenient.

“It’s actually easier to get accepted to USC now than it was in the spring,” said Yoav Gillath, a senior pursuing a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in business analytics.

Gillath, who is Jewish and involved in USC’s Hillel movement, expressed hope that USC would ensure that any new rules are “predictably, fairly and equitably applied to all people, no matter which side of the issue they are on.”

In terms of safety, Gillath – who did not participate in the protests – said he “felt very safe” during the spring demonstrations on campus last year.

As for the new ID check-in, students said the first few days went smoothly, with little congestion when entering on foot or by car. Express lanes for people with USC IDs and the lack of bag checks sped up the process.

Sung, a senior at USC, said entering campus was “very smooth and quick.”

Nevertheless, in his opinion, the measures are still “too much”.

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(Times writer Teresa Watanabe contributed to this story.)