Two Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies stu­dents spent last night in jail af­ter they were ar­rest­ed by po­lice dur­ing a heat­ed protest at the south­ern gate to the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus yes­ter­day.

The stu­dents were ar­rest­ed af­ter they tried to pre­vent of­fi­cers from re­open­ing the gates to traf­fic as stu­dents called for UWI man­age­ment to do bet­ter with the han­dling of stu­dent safe­ty on the cam­pus.

Sources told the T&T Guardian the stu­dents were ar­rest­ed for ver­bal­ly abus­ing of­fi­cers and splash­ing them with wa­ter. They are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear in court to­day on the charges.

The protest was sparked by Tues­day’s bloody at­tempt­ed rape and as­sault of a sec­ond-year fe­male stu­dent by an un­known as­sailant at the Stu­dent Ac­tiv­i­ty Cen­tre (SAC). The Stu­dents’ Guild had called an emer­gency meet­ing yes­ter­day to al­low stu­dents to voice their con­cerns. But from very ear­ly in the pro­ceed­ings stu­dents’ tem­pers be­gan to flare as they lis­tened to friends and col­leagues re­count­ing in­ci­dents in which they felt they were in dan­ger and of the times they felt their con­cerns weren’t ad­e­quate­ly heard by ad­min­is­tra­tion.

One en­raged stu­dent sprung up and shout­ed, “I don’t know about any­body else, but I am not a num­ber!’’

An­oth­er chimed in, “I am not a num­ber!”

“Leh we close down the place!” he added, sug­gest­ing they block the cam­pus gate.

Police arrest a UWI student during the protest.

Anisto Alves

The stu­dents then marched to the south­ern gate where they met a huge pres­ence of cam­pus se­cu­ri­ty. “I nev­er see so much of all yuh in my life, what all yuh do­ing here now? When peo­ple was get­ting raped, where all yuh was?” one stu­dent shout­ed.

Af­ter per­sis­tent dri­vers de­ter­mined to get in and out of the cam­pus re­gard­less of the protest an­gered them more, the stu­dents de­cid­ed to “close the gate.”

Cam­pus se­cu­ri­ty tried to re­open the gates but the stu­dents were in­tent on keep­ing it closed. They shut the gate every time the se­cu­ri­ty opened it un­til they de­cid­ed to form a hu­man bar­ri­cade so the se­cu­ri­ty could not get through.

Speak­ing to re­porters then, Guild pres­i­dent Dar­rion Nar­ine said, “This is just stu­dents’ frus­tra­tion be­ing man­i­fest­ed hon­est­ly and tru­ly. We were just try­ing to have a lit­tle town hall and now you ac­tu­al­ly see how stu­dents are frus­trat­ed and the lev­el of frus­tra­tion they have ar­rived at to come out and line and block the gate.

“So far, ad­min­is­tra­tion has said we were work­ing with it but clear­ly it’s not be­ing done at a time­line that stu­dents can work with.”

UWI students block the South enterence gate yesterday.

Anisto Alves

UWI prin­ci­pal Prof Bri­an Copeland and deputy prin­ci­pal In­dar Ram­nar­ine soon ar­rived in an at­tempt to dif­fuse the sit­u­a­tion and ap­pease the stu­dents’ con­cerns af­ter po­lice ar­rived on the scene.

Ad­dress­ing the an­gry stu­dents near the south­ern gate, Copeland said, “I’m hear­ing peo­ple talk­ing about bud­get cuts and the im­pact of se­cu­ri­ty on the cam­pus. I want to say de­spite that, we are go­ing through a pe­ri­od where we are see­ing bud­get cuts—lis­ten to this —the bud­get go­ing to our se­cu­ri­ty of­fice is eight per cent in­creased in a time when we are see­ing a five per cent de­crease. We have al­lo­cat­ed eight per cent more to them this year.

“When it comes to se­cu­ri­ty, and this is a raw fact, se­cu­ri­ty is a mat­ter we have to work on all the time…we are in a sit­u­a­tion where it is not a sin­gle build­ing to se­cure - it’s very easy to se­cure a sin­gle build­ing - you could lock down the en­try points and so on. We are a small vil­lage and so the chal­lenges we have with re­spect to se­cu­ri­ty are the same as the po­lice would have in any town in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Nar­ine said.

De­spite Copeland’s sev­er­al at­tempts to pro­vide an­swers to the stu­dents, they did not ac­cept them and de­mand­ed a joint town hall meet­ing be­tween stu­dents, the Guild and ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Police officers use force to remove a UWI student trying to bloc them from opening the southern gate to the campus.

Anisto Alves

But things in­ten­si­fied when more po­lice ar­rived on the scene and be­gan forcibly re­mov­ing stu­dents and at­tempt­ing to open the gates. The stu­dents stood res­olute as they tried strug­gled to block the of­fi­cers from do­ing so. The of­fi­cers then start­ed pulling stu­dents away from the gates.

At this point, one male stu­dent was dragged to the ground out­side the gate by of­fi­cers and held there. A cou­ple of­fi­cers then forced the stu­dent to the ground and us­ing their knees to keep him im­mo­bile be­fore hand­cuff­ing him. An­oth­er male stu­dent was then grabbed and guid­ed to the oth­er side of the road by two of­fi­cers, one hold­ing him by his throat. He was then tripped and slammed on­to the pave­ment by an of­fi­cer be­fore be­ing hand­cuffed and tak­en to a near­by po­lice car.

While the stu­dents were be­ing ar­rest­ed, deputy prin­ci­pal Ram­nar­ine was seen run­ning to­wards them try­ing to ap­peal to the po­lice to let the stu­dents go. How­ev­er, was pushed away by an of­fi­cer. The stu­dents were then tak­en away from the scene.

Fol­low­ing their ar­rests, Guild pres­i­dent Nar­ine shared the ar­rest video on Twit­ter with the cap­tion: “Two stu­dent lead­ers who are known ad­vo­cates and much-loved in­di­vid­u­als on cam­pus be­ing bru­tal­ly ap­pre­hend­ed. #FreeNat­ty #Free­Bri­an.”