By
Benjamin Kim
Arizona Daily Wildcat
In many cases, arrest only the last resort
As members of Students Against Sweatshops locked themselves to the doors of the UA Administration building, officials from peer institutions said they would handle each protest situation differently.
At the University of California-Berkeley, each situation would be evaluated to determine whether it interferes with the academic mission of campus, threatens health and safety issues or damages property, said Marie Selde, spokeswoman for Berkeley
"Every case is different," Selde said. "There is no standard way of responding."
It's not unusual to have students block doors to the Administration building at Berkeley, Selde said.
At the school, police have usually been involved in advising administrators about what action to take. A few years ago, students were camping in front of the Administration building and were arrested for violating a rule concerning lodging on campus, he said.
"But in my time here, I've never seen students physically lock themselves to doors," said Selde, who has been at Berkeley for eight years.
"Obviously, when students are locked to the building, their (administrators') options are very limited," said Grant Sherwood, vice president of student affairs at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.
Sherwood said he would give students time to leave and hope they would get tired. He also added that he would carefully involve campus police and let students know what their rights are.
The university wouldn't try to immediately arrest students but would try to establish communication with them to work on realistic options and solutions, Sherwood said.
"We are a campus that has been more respectful of free speech within reason," he said. "If it becomes disruptive, then we would have to take some actions and involve our law enforcement."
Although there haven't been any serious protests in recent history at CSU, Sherwood said he remembers students protesting environmental issues by tying themselves to trees about 10 years ago.
The situation lasted only a day and was not disruptive to the school's normal operations, said Sherwood, who has been at the school for 32 years.
"We haven't had anything like that here," said Tom Flagg, spokesman for the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. "If we did, we would use every opportunity to settle such a situation peacefully."
Officials at UNLV would react depending on the situation, but they would also try to avoid making arrests, said Flagg, who has been at UNLV for 20 years.
"If it came to arresting students, I'm sure the police would, but that would be a last resort," he said.
Flagg said he hasn't seen many protests at UNLV in recent years.
"I came from an era when we did that all the time," Flagg said. "But none of that has happened here."
University of Washington officials have taken a stricter stance against such protests, said Steven Olswang, vice provost at UW.
Last year, both students and non-students held a sit-in at the president's office to protest animal rights, he said.
"We let them know that they were breaking a state trespassing law, and that they had to leave or be arrested," Olswang said.
The protesters left the following morning, and students have not protested since then, Olswang said.
"We are obligated to keep our public services open, and we did not negotiate any of their terms," he said.
Officials at the University of California-Los Angeles haven't seen such a situation for at least 20 years, said Lauren Bartlett, a spokeswoman for UCLA.
"We wouldn't want to speculate on what we'd do," Bartlett said. "Each situation is different."
