By: Annika Harshbarger

After leaving her final class of sophomore year Cameron Gray planned to hangout with a friend. She made the decision to pass Dunn Meadow, a decision that changed her life. In this three part series listen to Cameron Gray tell her story of being arrested in Dunn Meadow for protesting Indiana Universities investments in companies supporting the genocide in Gaza, being held for a few hours in the Indiana University field house unable to use the bathroom, and spending several hours in a hot, packed, white tiled holding cell in the Monroe County Jail.

TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FEATURE

Annika Harshbarger: This is part two of Banned from IU. A three part series focusing on Cameron Gray and her story of being arrested on Dunn Meadow for quote “using her voice” end quote. To listen to part one go to wfhb.org and search banned from IU: part 1. When we left Cameron last Tuesday she was on an IU bus with her hands zip tied behind her back. She had stumbled upon the protest by chance and was one of the first to be arrested and sat on a hill only able to watch as more students were arrested. She was led up the hill, and then up the stairs by the IMU bus stop and on to an IU bus that was anything but quiet. 

Harshbarger: Cameron walks on to the bus and sees most of the protesters have sat in the back. She walks to join them and says. 

Cameron Gray: “Well, hey guys, you know, and we just kind of rest and the solidarity and the knowledge that this isn’t good. This is actually quite scary, but we are here together.”

“We had a mission. And that was just sent a message that you can arrest us and that will not stop us that’s not going to stop our voices. “

Harshbarger: While they are stomping and chanting loud enough for people outside of the bus to hear them Cameron looked out the window.

Gray: “Guys it’s my sister… So someone had you know, gotten in contact with her and said, Hey, your sister’s arrested” 

Harshbarger: The bus of arrested students and professors were scared but not discouraged.

Gray: “Here we are, you know, zip tied, dragged around, beat up, you know, on this IU bus with police. And, you know, we’re just as loud as we were on the field.”

Harshbarger: During this bus ride Cameron didn’t know where she was being taken. She assumed the county jail. She assumed wrong. Throughout the bus ride people are asking the police questions. 

Gray: “we’re saying where are you going to take us? You know, we’re, we’re, we’re met with silence. So we finally pull up, you know, I see like a gravel parking lot. And like some stone looking architecture, and I’m like, where did you bring us? Where did you bring us?”

“We’re led through the door and I see that it’s the indoor track and field. Field House, you know, IU’s very own. And there’s a couple rows of small wooden chairs lined up. They say, take a seat. And that was shocking because that was like what what purposes have you for not taking us to jail? You know, what, what is the serve? What channels are you going through that that’s deemed that? Yes, you’re going to take the students on an IU bus to an IU Field House and hold them with with no answers for two hours”

Harshbarger: The field house was hot, and people were not doing well. One of the people that had been arrested had low blood sugar. They were pale and had to sit on the floor.

Gray: “The police would not do anything. So I had to behind my back, still cuffed on the student, he had to kneel on the ground. And behind my back, I had to try to feed them water. And then another student had, you know, granola bar and a granola bar that like, survived in their pocket. And they had to feed them that the same way.”

“There was another student that eventually they had to call like emergency services for it was just, it felt so wrong. And the whole time we were just, you know, questioning, almost like the legality of it. You know, does anyone know we’re here? How long are they going to keep us here? Nor are we going to jail? Are you Where are you taking us?”

“that was scary, because, you know, essentially, now we’re just students that have been zip tied, dragged off campus, no charges, no rights, some of us haven’t been told we’re under arrest. And we’re just sitting in this field house. They won’t let us go pee. You know, they won’t give us food or water. I screamed for two hours. That I had to be, I guess, maybe a little vulgar. I asked him if I could just pee my pants. They wouldn’t let me. 

Harshbarger: After the police changed positions one came up to Cameron and asked if she had any questions.

Gray: “I said, Yeah. I have to go to the bathroom. They won’t let me I know for a fact there’s a bathroom in this place. I made him very, very uncomfortable because I brought up the fact that I was on my period that I felt I have a tampon and I’m gonna get toxic shock. You know, there’s blood running down my leg…, I’m gonna pee everywhere. And I think it’s really wrong that you won’t let me go pee, said I know you don’t care. But um, you know, it’s pretty gross. And he looked quite disturbed by the mention of blood and a natural, you know, bodily process in and finally at the end of almost two hours I was allowed to go to the bathroom.”

Harshbarger: After Cameron used the bathroom her hands were re-cuffed, but this time they were in front of her.

Gray: “I saw my sister outside the door. She had been waiting there the whole time, you know? And I was actually able to sign her a little bit, you know, I said, Hey, my phone’s dead. And, you know, what are they doing? And she said, yeah, there’s a shuttle on its way to take you guys. So we were able to trade information which provided greatly because we weren’t getting that anywhere else.”

Harshbarger: Cameron had had enough of the I don’t know’s, inconsistent answers and silence from the police.

Gray: “I said, you, you cuff us and you bring us here and you don’t know why. How blindly Can you follow orders?”

“there was such a lack of any sort of respect, and not that I think we were in a position where we would be getting respect from from, you know, the people who arrested us, but you’d expect a level of human decency that was just absent, it was just void. Maybe not even void, but it was replaced with some level of malice, you know, you know, they seem mad at us. And, you know, this is your punishment, almost, you know, not not going to jail not being put under arrest. But staying here without answers, not drinking water, not getting food, not getting answers not having the decency to use a restroom. It felt like an intentional kind of job on top of everything else. Because, you know, as we saw, in the end, they did have the power to give us water and to let us use the bathroom and to loosen the cuffs so that, you know, they finally did replace the cuffs of the student whose fingers were turning purple after hours of them pleading, and the rest of the students advocating for them. And they had cuts in their wrist, from how hard they were digging in. So it was, yeah, it was and it’s there was this battle kind of that’s been waged internally and me because I am both, you know, I’m dealing with the, the injustice of what I feel like I faced. But then there’s, you know, there’s a part of you, that’s what I’m fighting for, is the people who are, are dehumanized to the fullest extent, who are having bombs just dropped and who are being starved and murdered and put in mass graves. And, you know, so there’s, there’s a level of, of not letting yourself revel in your own pity, because it was worth it, you know, any anything I have to go through, you know, peeing my pants and being dehydrated, and having a sore elbow is? Is nothing.” 

Harshbarger: An IU bus pulled up outside of the field house. Police picked the rowdiest students and loaded them onto the bus to be taken to the Monroe County Jail first. Cameron sat in the field house for almost another hour until an IU bus again pulled up outside of the field house. Cameron was lead on to the bus and sat down. 

Gray: “It was beautiful because you know, they have posters all over the walls and the buses. And on one of the one of the little posters up on the bus said, the leaders of tomorrow, use your voice it said use your voice.”

Harshbarger: Protestors found the irony to be too much and had to laugh a little at how untrue the poster felt to them. Everybody on the bus sat in contemplating silence. 

Gray: “The anger was still there. But, you know, it was sort of under the surface now, you know, now we’re just all thinking to ourselves, like, it’s starting to set in as much as it can, you know, the adrenaline has, has sort of waned. So that was it. It was a quiet one, Justin, you know, shock and trying to begin to process what’s going on, you know, we’ve we’ve been through so much already, and we’re not even to the jail.” 

Harshbarger: We leave Cameron on yet another IU bus, tune in next week to hear part 3, the end,  of Cameron’s story. 

For WFHB this has been Annika Harshbarger