A s a senior at the University of Texas at Austin, I expected to spend last week finishing up projects, studying for exams, and preparing for graduation. However, those plans were thrown into jeopardy when protesters expressed their intent to occupy the South Lawn — the center of campus just south of the iconic UT tower — in solidarity with Gaza, but also with their comrades at Columbia who have forcibly occupied large portions of their campus since April 17.

The UT administration informed them the day before that their planned protest violated school rules and would not be allowed to proceed. Despite these warnings, over 500 protesters assembled on the late morning of Wednesday, April 24, and prepared to march to the South Lawn.

But it was only when I saw state troopers, many mounted on horses or motorcycles, arriving on the scene that I realized the extent to which the university was gearing up for a fight. These preparations proved prudent, as the protesters soon broke through the police cordon separating them from their objective and by 2 p.m. had made their way to the South Lawn, where they began setting up tents. There were several incidents of violence against police, mostly notably with one protester throwing horse dung at them.

UT was having none of it. Yet more troopers arrived on campus, to salutes from many watching students, and 55 arrests were made (of which 26 had no UT affiliation). UT’s safety-alert system repeatedly played a message ordering protesters to disperse “in the name of the people of Texas” or be charged with disorderly conduct, riot, and obstruction of a highway. Residence halls were closed, and police began forcing protesters west onto Guadalupe Street — a major Austin thoroughfare. The occupation was successfully ended.

That night, there were a lot of mixed emotions on UT, with even many students who opposed the protesters’ cause wondering whether such a stern response was justified. Even I doubted whether such a display of force was prudent or whether it would goad the protesters into a fiercer resistance.

The next day vindicated the UT administration. The organizers announced their plans to reconvene in front of the tower — where they were met by UT staff members handing out flyers stating what was, and was not, First Amendment–protected speech. Protests remained peaceful, with some participants even restraining their fellows from overly aggressive action, and then wound down. By 5 p.m., the protesters were gone, and groups of young women were once more taking graduation photos in the fountain: The area had been returned to its indispensable function. Despite the attempts of outside agitators to re-create the encampment today, the university has largely remained tranquil.

There are a few lessons that other universities, the conservative movement, and the nation as a whole can learn from this story.

First, other universities should take note of what happens when a firm hand is taken with protesters. While there were of course calls on UT president Jay Hartzel to resign, they do not appear to be going anywhere, and life on campus has resumed normality, with only a few events being canceled because of the disruption. Compare this with the University of Southern California, which had to cancel its graduation, or Columbia, which as of this writing is still out of control. It may seem scary to take a stand for the rules, especially when it produces videos like this, but in the long run it is better, even for their own careers, for administrators to nip attempted disorder in the bud, lest they embolden protesters while giving them more time to entrench themselves.

The lesson to be learned by conservatives is about the importance of supporting conservative student journalism. We have a detailed, firsthand account of the protests from a non-leftist viewpoint because of UT’s right-leaning newspaper, the Texas Horn, which I co-founded in 2021. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute sponsors papers like ours around the country for this exact purpose — to ensure that, when craziness like this happens, we have someone on the scene with the skills, experience, and resources to document it. Supporting conservative student journalism on campus may seem an exercise in futility, but these protests have shown that it is a wise investment for the conservative movement.

Finally, and mostly important, the nation at large seems to have misunderstood what exactly happened in Texas. Among conservatives and progressives alike, the emphasis was on the political positions of the protesters — their supposed antisemitism and support for Hamas. Certainly, there is a need for a discussion of the alarming shift in campus ideology surrounding the Jewish community, Israel, and Hamas, but that discussion is completely irrelevant to what happened last week.

Many people have framed the response of the UT administration and Governor Greg Abbott to the protests as about “combating antisemitism.” This is not true; they were responding to the clear and present threat to public safety that the protests posed. Had the protesters remained law-abiding, they could have yelled “Death to Israel, death to America,” and the state would not have dared touch a hair on their heads. Conversely, had the disturbance been pro-Israel, then the state would have had just as much of a duty to restore order as it did in this case.

Making the pacification about antisemitism, rather than public safety, makes a mockery of the First Amendment. However vile their motives may be, protesters have the right to peacefully protest, and however noble their aims, they have no right to public disruption. Of course, the poisoned ideology of the protests went hand in hand with their illegal tactics, and from afar it is easy to confuse the two, but if we fail to maintain the distinction, then we risk paving the way to using public safety as mere window dressing to ideological concern, as happened in Brussels earlier this month.

President Hartzel put it well the day after the protest when he wrote he was thankful both “that our campus has seen 13 pro-Palestinian events take place during the past several months largely without incident — plus another one today,” but also “that everyone is safe after yesterday, we continue to hold in-person classes, and that today’s events followed our long-standing campus standards for allowed demonstrations.”

These protests were an exam that UT Austin passed with flying colors — but it is important to understand that it was the respect for both freedom and law, not any particular desire to crack down on disfavored speech, that won the day.