Denver student protest leaves officials scrambling | News [Video]

The clashes with police and arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters that have erupted in colleges across the nation were on full display on Friday, when Denver officers cleared an encampment and arrested more than two dozen protesters on a campus shared by three universities.

And just as university officials elsewhere in the country struggle to respond, the protest appears to have left Colorado administrators scrambling to figure out how to deal with the activists.

One crucial difference, however, is that in the case of the Auraria protest, university officials did not take days before deciding how to respond. The protesters had erected tents on Thursday. By Friday afternoon, the police moved in to dismantle them and arrest about two dozen protesters. By contrast, the tents are still up at Columbia University, more than a week after police arrested roughly 100 protesters. The protesters there said they had reached an impasse with university administrators and intended to continue their encampment.    

It appears that some university officials here did not …