Speaking strictly legally, Yale and any other private university have a non-trivial amount of authority to regulate the use of their own private spaces, and even ignoring that, the right to protest is not unlimited, particularly when it starts to impede the ability of others to conduct their own legal activities. Yale claims that the trespassing decision was made due to the protests blocking the ability of faculty and staff to access their facilities.
There’s also reports of one student being stabbed in the eye with a flag pole, and fundamentally, the Constitution does not give anyone the right to camp and protest on private land. Students were warned multiple times before police were finally moved in. Part of civil disobedience is accepting the consequences of said disobedience. Those arrested knew what would happen and chose accordingly. I won’t fault them for that.
Speaking strictly legally, Yale and any other private university have a non-trivial amount of authority to regulate the use of their own private spaces, and even ignoring that, the right to protest is not unlimited, particularly when it starts to impede the ability of others to conduct their own legal activities. Yale claims that the trespassing decision was made due to the protests blocking the ability of faculty and staff to access their facilities.
There’s also reports of one student being stabbed in the eye with a flag pole, and fundamentally, the Constitution does not give anyone the right to camp and protest on private land. Students were warned multiple times before police were finally moved in. Part of civil disobedience is accepting the consequences of said disobedience. Those arrested knew what would happen and chose accordingly. I won’t fault them for that.