Overnight at MIT’s encampment, days before police arrived

Just steps off Massachusetts Avenue and behind the famed Alchemist statue, undergraduate and graduate students spent weeks hosting “teach-ins,” participating in rallies, and negotiating with university administrators to divest from projects that connect MIT with Israel.

On Thursday, protesters pawed through boxes of supplies as they took inventory of the encampment’s needs. Safiyyah Ogundipe, a 21-year-old chemical engineering student from Virginia, was in charge.

“We get a lot of medical supplies and personal care supplies,” said Ogundipe, who scribbled down letters and numbers to record what the community had donated, what students had sourced. “It gets cold at night, so we have a lot of things like hand warmers and body warmers.”

When the rain started to deluge later that night, students pushed stray puddles from the tarp floor onto the grass using squeegees meant for car windows.

Around 6 p.m. Friday, protesters walked into the main tent to scoop chicken and rice, carried in by community members minutes earlier, onto paper plates. Others made peanut butter sandwiches or dug into cardboard boxes of granola bars, cap’n crunch, matzo, Oreos, dried fruit, and parmesan cheese dropped off daily by supporters.

“Everyone is dying to support us in some way,” said perian, a member of Jews For ceasefire, who led a Shabbat dinner before it got dark. “As soon as we put stuff on the list, those supplies get satisfied within the day.”

Nobody had forgotten that there is still an academic school year to complete. At all hours of the day, students pounded their laptops at a nearby picnic table. While administrators at other campuses turned off electricity inside encampments, there were plenty of outlets to charge students’ devices and power hot water kettles via a daisy chain of extension cords from Kresge Auditorium.

Organizers often huddled in one of the encampment’s far corners, discussing updates from the undergraduate team responsible for negotiating with MIT administrators. The weekend before, on April 27, hours after police removed an encampment on the campus of Northeastern University, MIT president Sally Kornbluth released a videotaped message telling protesters the encampment needed to wind down. Then on Monday, in a letter sent out to the MIT community, Kornbluth took a more urgent approach, writing that she

“must now take action to bring closure” to the encampment, which she said was “no longer safely sustainable.”

Kornbluth argued the encampment was drawing protesters with no MIT affiliation.

“This is not theoretical: Earlier this week, a group of more than 150 people from outside MIT gathered on Massachusetts Avenue in support of the encampment,” Kornbluth wrote.

One such rally had taken place that Friday. Later in the day, some students retired to their tents to sleep, but not everyone was ready for bed. At 1:30 a.m., five students kicked a soccer ball and others rummaged around the main tent for a cold slice of pizza. prahlad Iyengar, a first-year graduate student, dragged a chair toward the encampment’s entrance to keep watch, a wooden drumstick in each hand.

The night brought several altercations with counterprotesters. At about 3:30 a.m., students peered out from their tents after someone from outside the barricades yelled, “Yo, wake the [expletive] up!” Two women, identified by protesters as people who have attempted to antagonize pro-palestinians multiple times, stumbled into the encampment, drunk, minutes later.

Mohamed Mohamed, a 24year-old graduate student, offered the women water and a place to stay. It wasn’t the first time they had showed up late at night, said Mohamed, who said he worried about whether they’d get home safely.

combat boots, sneakers, and crocs dotted the grass outside. Inside, students laid atop inflatable sleeping pads, wrapped in donated blankets. As the sun rose, the light revealed mended holes in some of the tents’ exteriors.

“We’ve been donated a lot of tents that have pieces missing,” said Metzger, the graduate student. “We’ve learned how to work with tarps and how to use them as rain flies.”

before 8 a.m., members of the community started streaming in with armloads of food that included paper bags of bagels, tubs of cream cheese, bundles of bananas, and freshly baked rugelach.

From the direction of Massachusetts Avenue, 59-year-old brookline resident Ted Lewis hopped off his bike and walked through the entrance of the encampment. “I just want to let you all know I’m Jewish, and so many of us support what you guys are doing,” he said. “You’re putting the spotlight on the atrocities my tax dollars are supporting.”

between 2020 and 2024,

MIT reported receiving $2.8 million in grants, gifts, and contracts from Israeli entities, according to data from the US Department of Education. While the university has declined to provide further information regarding its Israeli ties, protesters allege that the school receives money from Israel’s Ministry of Defense for research and is actively involved in a project that works to enhance drones’ ability to track moving targets, a resource students claim will be used to surveil protesters in Gaza and the United States.

Late Saturday morning, a child in a blue tutu ran into the encampment with her dad, Dan Zeno, a graduate student. Zoey, 5, is known as the “princess of the camp,” he said.

Zoey took two students by the hand, dragging them behind her as she weaved through a cluster of tents. She plopped down and dumped out the contents of her sparkly purse, revealing a tiny pair of pink sunglasses, a ribbon, and a miniature Etch A Sketch. It would be one of Zoey’s last visits to the encampment before the students she had gotten to know linked arms and formed a human chain before police.

by Monday afternoon, word of the encampment’s imminent demise rippled through the community. At about 1:30 p.m., students within the metal barriers were presented with letters from administrators who ordered the camp be packed up within the hour. Minutes before, several officers had begun guarding the encampment’s entrance.

Zeno wrapped his fingers around the perimeter of the fence as students scrambled to carry their belongings out of the encampment. A table outside Stratton sat piled high with supplies, including thermometers and jars of jelly, which protesters had spent weeks accumulating.

Metzger and Iyengar, among a small group of protesters who attempted to occupy the William barton Rogers building around 3:45 p.m., sat on the Lobby 7 steps with their arms linked. Gripping a box of apples, peanuts, and bananas, perian raced up the stairs toward his friends.

On the lawn of Kresge Auditorium, Ogundipe walked down a line of protesters that had formed a human chain around the encampment. She held a large printed QR code, pausing so students could scan it for information on what to do in the event they were arrested.

Zeno stood a few feet from the crowd, holding his head in his hands as protesters braced for the police. Two students appeared at his side, placing hands on his shoulders to offer support.

“I will miss this place if they proceed with the sweep,” Zeno said, “but we are family now. We will fight together for the rest of our lives.”