Paint splattered on floors. Spray-painted messages and screeds covering walls. Furniture moved and overturned. Security cameras disabled. Fire extinguishers missing and entrances blocked by stacks of chairs.
“We’ve got our work cut out for us,” a facilities manager at Portland State University said Thursday as he examined the destruction left behind after a three-day occupation by pro-Palestinian protesters in Millar Library.
Police removed occupiers that morning and arrested 12, including four students, as they swept the five-story building. They made more arrests throughout the day as people congregated in and around the downtown campus.
Police allowed The Oregonian/OregonLive inside the library after they cleared it and said it appeared most of the occupation was on the library’s first three floors.
A white sign painted with red lettering that proclaimed, “WELCOME TO THE REFAAT ALAREER MEMORIAL LIBRARY,” was draped over a painted mural that generally greets library visitors. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators renamed the library after the Palestinian poet who died in an Israeli airstrike in December, part of Israel’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which they killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted roughly 240 hostages.
The library’s ground floor was splattered with orange, red and yellow paint, with empty water bottles strewn about.
File cabinets and other furniture blocked elevator doors.
Glass-covered displays were smashed.
The white-walled stairwells were covered with red paint showing an arrow up to a makeshift medic station on the second floor amid anarchist symbols of an “A” written inside a circle and messages including “BURN YER HOMEWORK” and “CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE DOESN’T MAKE US CRIMINALS.”
A second-floor corner apparently reserved for medics was set up with tables of eye wash, baby wash, towels, water and tubs of batteries. Arrows were spray-painted on walls to show locations of bathrooms.
A corner coffeeshop on the second floor was renamed the “Intifada Cafe,” with a sign taped to the counter that showed a phone number for “a jail support hotline” and boxes of coffee from Sesame Donuts beside containers of white cheddar snack crackers.
Multiple ice chests were stacked on top of one another nearby and a refrigerated case was filled with what looked like personal food and drink containers, including almond and oat milk, with “Free!” spray-painted above in orange.
A closet became an “open pantry,” with a sign that directed: “Take what you want!” from shelves filled with cases of Rockstar and Monster energy drinks and bags of bagels. Elsewhere, apples filled red tubs near a table covered with other snacks, including a lone box of Matzos.
Another table was covered with assorted bottles of herbal sleeping aids and “calming” nervous system supplements next to a container of what appeared to be marijuana.
Lounge chairs were moved into hallways. Chairs were stacked on top of each another to block stairwells.
A lone bound volume of Frank Miller’s comics anthology, “Sin City,” was removed from its collection and found resting on a chair on the third floor.
Derogatory messages to university President Ann Cudd and President Joe Biden covered some doors and walls. “Blood on your hands” was spray-painted in red across stacked books on one shelf. Black-and-white stickers reading “PSU! Ditch Boeing” were left on the nameplates outside librarian employees’ offices.
Bamboo sticks were stacked next to tubs of ball bearings in a corner of a stairwell.
Workers had swept up broken glass and worked to board up the ground-floor windows of the library.
Large dumpsters stationed in front of the library were filled with the wooden pallets that had made up the fortification at the building entrance, as well as the signs, trash cans, umbrellas and tarps that had been added to the blockade.
By midday, Cudd, the university president, said she was grateful for the support of the mayor, police chief and district attorney to return the library to the school’s control but decried the extensive damage.
“We must take care of all of our students and provide a safe learning environment,” she said. “It is tragic that some of our students, along with others from outside, have so badly damaged our library and taken away that essential learning space. You know, as a philosophy professor and the daughter of librarians, that space is really a sacred space. And I’m really so sad to see what has happened to them.”
Cudd said she also had received reports from campus security and staff of potential thefts of rare archival material, including its full Dark Horse Comics collection.
The university does not have an estimate yet of how much it will cost to clean up the library, according to Katy Swordfisk, a university spokesperson.
“It will take a while to get that figured out. And with protestors actively taking over the library again, any estimates we may have started could be inaccurate,” Swordfisk said Thursday night, as reports surfaced about people attempting to get back into the building.
Gail Hamilton, the school’s construction manager who has worked for the university for 21 years, said he’d never seen anything like the damage caused.
Occupiers had blocked below-basement, manned tunnels beneath the library that hold mechanical systems, pipes and water lines.
“This is too big for us to handle,” he said, adding that the school will be hiring a contractor to help clean up the mess. “It’s just ugly.”
-- Maxine Bernstein covers federal court and criminal justice. Reach her at 503-221-8212, mbernstein@oregonian.com, follow her on X @maxoregonian, or on LinkedIn.
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