The pro-Palestinian encampment at Penn has become a game of cat and mouse between protesters and administrators

Images of police swarming college campuses, amid violent skirmishes between protesters and counterprotesters, are playing out on televisions across America:

Police took back control Tuesday night of a building that protesters had occupied at Columbia University. UCLA canceled classes amid turmoil. Protesters clashed with police at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

But at the University of Pennsylvania, where a pro-Palestinian encampment on the College Green is completing day seven, it’s been almost a game of cat and mouse, with the administration and protesters at a stalemate and every move being analyzed as a potential development.

» READ MORE: Penn says it will pursue disciplinary action against encamped pro-Palestinian protesters

When eight Philadelphia Police Department and Penn officers around noon Wednesday began loosening the barricades, set up by the university to enclose the encampment, protesters anticipated more action could be coming. Members of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment began cheering and banging on empty Deer Park water jugs to commemorate making it seven days.

But hours passed — and nothing.

“We don’t have to do stupid,” Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said during a visit to the encampment Wednesday. “What we should be doing here is upholding our tradition of being a welcoming, inviting city, where people say things, even if other people don’t like them, because they have a right to say it in the United States and where protesters also have an obligation to remain nonviolent and to engage in speech.”

Penn administration was mum about its plans for handling the encampment, which has remained at about 60 members since last week, or whether it had set a deadline for the camp to come down, as interim President J. Larry Jameson had called for last week. The university spokesperson declined comment on those questions or whether the board of trustees was involved in the decision-making.

There have been petitions and calls from faculty groups to let the encampment stand and to remove the threat of discipline from student and faculty protesters; Penn said earlier this week that it had initiated disciplinary processes involving some protesters.

And on Thursday morning, a group describing itself as a coalition of concerned Penn students, faculty, alumni and staff plan to deliver a petition with more than 1,800 signatures to Jameson’s office, calling for Penn to remove the encampment.

“We have circulated a petition ... calling upon President Jameson to honor his word, when he said in a recent email that the encampment must be removed,” the group said in a media announcement. “He has yet to do this.”

Republican Dave McCormick, who is challenging U.S. Sen. Bob Casey for his seat, also spoke out against the encampment during a visit.

“The authorities need to act with clarity and moral courage and break up these cities and discipline the kids that are violating the rules,” he said.

Protesters, some of whom met with Jameson on Tuesday night, said university officials expressed concern about looming final exams, due to start on Tuesday and run through May 14, and the proximity of the encampment to the library. It’s also unclear how Penn will handle commencement, scheduled for May 20 at Franklin Field, if the encampment is still up.

Penn has not commented on the meeting or responded to a question about commencement. The university has relocated a senior class celebration scheduled to take place on the College Green on Thursday morning to Shoemaker Green, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper.

The university also has been worried about the potential for outsiders to cause safety risks, which was elevated again on Wednesday. A man wearing a green polo shirt and black pants sprayed tents in the encampment with liquid from a pesticide can. Officers with Penn’s Department of Public Safety said the man was not affiliated with the university. Officers are testing the substance and asked encampment members to avoid the area where the liquid was sprayed.

Earlier in the week, a 70-year-old man wearing a large knife in his belt came to a Passover Seder held at the encampment. The man, who was not affiliated with the encampment or protest, was charged with having cutting instruments in streets or public places.

The meeting between Jameson and protesters resulted in “a stalemate,” Philly Palestine Coalition member and encampment spokesperson Nneka Azuka told The Inquirer on Wednesday morning.

Jameson told organizers that university administrators “would not negotiate unless the encampment was taken down,” Azuka said. “But the encampment is the only leverage we have.”

Meanwhile, student organizers said they will not negotiate further unless a series of new demands are met, including the university committing to not sending police inside the encampment, withdrawing a demand to end it and withdrawing disciplinary notices to participants.

A Penn faculty group said the university is violating its own guidelines for open expression by attempting to discipline students for participating in the encampment.

“It was wholly inappropriate for the Committee on Open Expression to distribute threats on behalf of the administration,” the Penn chapter of the American Association of University Professors wrote in a statement, referring to fliers that were passed out, saying students must furnish their Penn IDs when asked.

And asserting that students must show IDs is a violation, too, the group said.

“The guidelines establish that in the case of demonstrations that do not violate the guidelines — and this demonstration does not — participants have a right to privacy and their presence shall not be reported,” the faculty group said.

On Monday, the university issued “anticipatory guidance,” according to the Daily Pennsylvanian, giving it the power to check IDs as a safety measure — which the faculty group also called out as “specious grounds.”

“We are witnessing an Orwellian situation,” the group said. “... A body of the central administration with unilateral power to interpret and enforce guidelines that are supposed to protect the right to protest — is attempting to shut down a nonviolent protest that is in compliance with the guidelines. It is doing so by fabricating nonexistent rules and claiming that they are part of the guidelines ...— and who can tell them otherwise?”

Penn declined to comment on the AAUP letter.