WSU Students for Justice in Palestine have taken Wayne State University’s Detroit campus hostage, and they’re vowing to retain control until university officials acquiesce to their demands.

Pro-Hamas protestors set up a ramshackle “WSU Liberated Zone” on the lawn in front of State Hall on Thursday, joining thousands of college students on campuses across the country working to pressure President Joe Biden into calling for a ceasefire in Hamas’ war against Israel.

“A small encampment of pro-Palestinian protestors was set up on campus,” WSU spokesman Matt Lockwood confirmed in a statement Thursday cited by The Detroit News. “It is an evolving situation, with public safety on site to ensure that it is peaceful, safe, and non-disruptive to our campus operations.”

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The group’s stated list of demands suggests that won’t be the case.

They include special scholarships, fellowships, and legal and financial protections for Palestinian and Gazan students that aren’t afforded to others, an apology for the university police department’s alleged use of excessive force during a student protest last month, policies to protect protestors, a travel ban against university police training in Israel, and disclosure and divestment from index funds or other investments involving companies that do business with Israel.

Organizers wrote in an email to The News they plan to camp out in the middle of the WSU campus until all of their demands are met.

“Wayne State is complicit in genocide!!” WSU Students for Justice in Palestine posted to Facebook. “Disclose. Divest. We will not stop. We will not rest.”

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“We are here to say that we want divestment and we want our voices heard because our voices have not been heard and they’ve actually been trying to silence us with passing certain rules that target us specifically and our actions,” WSU student Zeinab Aldhanem told WXYZ. “So we set up camp and hopefully, we’ll be here until we have divestment from the Wayne State University funds.”

Images and video posted online shows the protestors have erected numerous tents inside a perimeter created using string, cardboard, doors, ladders, plywood, pallets, and other garbage. Signs littered throughout read “Halal zone, no pigs,” “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” “divest from genocide,” and “BOG there is blood on your hands.”

Pro-Palestinian activists set up an encampment at Wayne State University and are making multiple demands. pic.twitter.com/D0GzdNlXxb

— Steve Neavling (@MCmuckraker) May 24, 2024

On Thursday night, several dozen WSU students gathered at the encampment, where speakers outlined their goals and what to do if university officials send in police to break it up, WJBK reports.

“People will try their best to discourage you and I, to push yourself away from saying what needs to be said. This is the least that you and I can do,” one speaker told the crowd. “If this movement was not striking fear into their hearts, they would have never stood against the students.”

The protest antics in Detroit come just days after the University of Michigan dismantled an encampment on campus after a month of student protests that included “troubling events” involving vandalism, violence and intimidation.

It took police roughly a half hour on Tuesday to clear the university’s Diag, where about 200 had been sleeping in tents and generating reports of vandalism, protestors accosting Jewish students, and literature calling for “Death to America.”

Last week, dozens of those protestors dialed up their hysterics by targeting the homes of seven out of eight U-M regents, littering their lawns with fake, bloody corpses and toys, and taping a list of demands on their doors.

Regent Chair Sarah Hubbard was unimpressed, and responded to the student demands on X.

“Protestors want me to cut all ties with Israel’s higher ed institutions, let politics drive investment of our endowment funds, give unaccountable community activists control over the university’s budget and defund the campus police,” she wrote. “I say no, no, no and hell no.”

Ultimately, it was students’ refusal to heed sensible safety precautions that forced U-M officials to intervene, leading to the arrest of four individuals who were later released.

“The fire marshal and Student Life leaders asked camp occupants to remove external camp barriers, refrain from overloading power sources and stop using open flames,” University President Santa Ono wrote in a Tuesday statement. “The protesters refused to comply with these requests. That forced the university to take action and this morning, we removed the encampment.”

“Moving forward, individuals will be welcome to protest as they always have at the University of Michigan, so long as those protests don’t violate the rights of others and are consistent with university policies meant to ensure the safety of our community,” Ono wrote. “To be clear, there is no place for violence or intimidation at the University of Michigan. Such behavior will not be tolerated, and individuals will be held accountable.”