About 60 students in caps and gowns silently walked out during Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s commencement speech Saturday at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, setting a tone perhaps for a weekend of graduation ceremonies that caps weeks of tumult on college campuses over pro-Palestinian protests.
Among the colleges scheduled to hold their main commencement ceremonies Saturday are the University of Illinois; California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and the University of Texas at Austin, with many increasing their security measures in anticipation of possible disruptions.
The University of Wisconsin said it had reached a deal with protesters to clear the encampment before Saturday’s commencement in return for a meeting to discuss the university’s investments. At the University of Mississippi, where there had been a confrontation between counterprotesters who taunted and jeered a female Black student protester, there were no demonstrations and light security.
At VCU, where the ceremony included more than 1,000 students, some objected to the appearance by Youngkin, a Republican, in part because he supported the dismantling of an encampment on campus. Late last month, 13 people, including six students, were arrested. A reporter in attendance at the graduation was not permitted to leave the auditorium to speak with the students who walked out.
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On Friday, some commencement-related events were disrupted as protests and arrests continued on campuses. At UC Berkeley, a handful of people chanted about the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip at a ceremony for law school graduates, at times drowning out speakers, including the law school dean and the solicitor general of the United States. At the University of Texas at Dallas, the university president paused his speech when about two dozen graduates walked out chanting.
Police made arrests and cleared encampments of pro-Palestinian demonstrators on Friday at the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Officers were also called in to clear an encampment at the University of Arizona in Tucson, deploying “chemical munitions” in the process, hours before its graduation ceremony Friday evening.
