SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Naomi Schumichen was on the phone with her sister on April 22, taking a walk around the Cal Poly Humboldt campus for fresh, coastal air. She heard shouting from Siemens Hall, and noticed an unusual number of police officers starting to swarm the building.

She watched as a growing number of protesters began chanting for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and demanding the university disclose any financial dealings with the Israeli military. She crossed the quad to the student activity center and walked up to the second-floor balcony to get a better view of the chaotic scene below.

“I just wanted to be there,” Schumichen said, “in case something happened, or somebody got hurt.”

She said she left the scene before the violent clash that day between police and protesters that resulted in a student-led occupation of the university’s administrative building. For over a week, dozens of students barricaded themselves in Siemens Hall while hundreds of their classmates took watch around the building, stayed overnight in tents, participated in a faculty-led teach-in, learned traditional Palestinian dances, and lit candles and burnt sage for victims of the Israel-Hamas War.

This escalating scene at Cal Poly Humboldt unfolded as students across the nation began occupying campus spaces in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. And while other, larger universities have drawn more national attention, this small, quiet college in Northern California has seen one of the most intense university protests, leading to more than 30 arrests, millions of dollars in damage and a shutdown of the campus.

Schumichen, a third-year transfer student from El Dorado Hills, said she returned to the quad later that first night to see what had developed. She returned sporadically throughout the week, and was especially excited about the teach-in, which took place in the quad last Wednesday.

Beyond some chalk art on the ground, Schumichen said she did nothing besides what she might have done on any other day on the progressive and close-knit campus: seek out her friends, gather where professors were speaking and participate in some of the impromptu campus activities that students love about the small, 8,000-person college.

“Our professors were there,” Schumichen said. “So it felt safe to be there.”

A suspension, and countless questions

But on April 26, four days after the initial demonstration, she received an email from Molly Kresl, associate dean of students, informing her that she had been placed on an interim suspension “for either the duration of the occupation of Siemens Hall and Nelson Hall or May 12th, 2024, whichever is shorter.”

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