Harvard University’s anti-Israel tent encampment was temporarily thwarted overnight — by a slew of sprinklers that flooded protesters’ tents – as demonstrations rocked other campuses across the country.
Dozens of sleeping protesters who were trying to catch some shuteye were disturbed when the sprinklers suddenly turned on in the middle of the Ivy League’s Cambridge campus.
“As protesters spend their first night in the Harvard Yard encampment, the biggest threat to their stay has not come from administrators or Harvard University police officers, but the Yard’s sprinklers,” the Harvard Crimson student-led paper said early Thursday.
The first sprinkler switched on just outside the encampment in Harvard Yard at about 2:30 a.m. as temperatures dipped to 36 degrees.
Then, just before 4 a.m., a sprinkler located in the middle of the tents started spraying out water, prompting students to quickly start handing out buckets.
“Two more sprinklers turned on at the edge of the encampment near Massachusetts Hall,” the newspaper said in a live blog update at 4:05 a.m.
“The sprinklers began to hit tents on the edge of the camp before protesters rushed over to cover the sprinklers with buckets and sit on them.”
Harvard’s Palestine Solidarity Committee said in an Instagram post some of the students’ tents were flooded with freezing cold water after the 4 a.m. burst. A video showed a student struggling to readjust a tarpaulin in a wet tent.
Protesters met and discussed how to handle the situation through another night and later moved their tents and supplies to other patches of grass away from the sprinklers, The Crimson reported.
The Post has reached out to Harvard for comment.
More than a dozen tents popped up at the $79,500-a-year college Wednesday after a rally against the university’s suspension of the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee.
Trying to stay ahead of planned protests that have already disrupted Columbia and New York University, Harvard locked most gates into its famous yard ahead of classes Monday and limited access to those with school identification.
The school also posted warning signs about setting up tents or tables on campus without permission.
As of Thursday, no arrests had been made.
The waterworks came as anti-Israel protests popped up on college campuses across the nation – including at New York City schools such as Columbia University, New York University, Fashion Institute of Technology and CUNY’s City College.
Across the Hudson River, Princeton University’s anti-Israel encampment failed to launch Thursday when two grad students were arrested within the first 10 minutes of the demonstration.
Achinthya Sivalingam and Hassan Sayed were busted shortly after the first tents went up, according to the Daily Princetonian.
“It’s a big flop,” said counter-protester Laurie Feldstein.
Professor Max Weiss delivered a long speech that was difficult to hear over the sound of patrolling helicopters overhead – he read a poem from a Palestinian writer which says that Jews “evolved, backward,” from “victims to victimizers.”
After police escorted another speaker, Chris Hedges, off campus, a demonstrator brandishing a sign calling for freedom for jailed Palestinian terrorist leader Ahmad Sa’adat led an enraged crowd in a chant of “there is only one solution Intifada revolution.”
Fireworks erupted during an afternoon press conference when a protester shouted “Hamas are freedom fighters” at Jewish student Max Meyer. By mid-afternoon, the crowd thinned and the demonstration took on more of a picnic and group hangout vibe.
Elsewhere, in Georgia, Emory University’s demonstrations got nasty as uniformed officers from the Atlanta Police Department, many with shields and gas masks and pellet guns, descended on campus after an encampment was set up on the main quad Thursday.
One video posted online showed a protester tackled to the ground and tased by police. The doctoral student who took the video told NBC News officers used tear gas, which was also reported by the student newspaper “The Emory Wheel.”
Activists said in a statement police used “pepper bullets, tear gas, and tasers for the simple act of camping out on a school lawn.”
Noelle McAfee, chair of the school’s Philosophy Department was filmed being detained, Atlanta News First reported.
Economics professor Caroline Fohlin was also arrested, per CNN.
Boston police arrested more than 100 demonstrators at Emerson University after tearing down an encampment there around 2 a.m. Thursday. The university canceled classes for the day, NBC Boston reported.
They were cleared out from their position in an alleyway in just 30 minutes. In total, 108 were taken in custody. Four police officers were injured, one serious, cops said.
Across town at Northeastern University, Boston police surrounded another encampment erected by hundreds of students and faculty in the school’s Centennial Common, according to the student newspaper The Huntington News. No arrests were made by Thursday afternoon, local outlets reported.
Meanwhile, the University of Southern California canceled its main commencement ceremony for graduating students next month over “new safety measures in place,” school officials announced Thursday.
Police arrested 93 student protesters at USC on Wednesday.
The decision comes a week after USC barred Muslim valedictorian Asna Tabassum, a biomedical engineering student, from delivering a graduation speech over security concerns.
The main stage ceremony, which was scheduled for May 10, traditionally brings all 65,000 students and their families together. The university said it plans “new activities and celebrations” for students.
