St. Cloud Times – St. Cloud police said they arrested two students Saturday evening when protesters briefly blocked the entrance to Herb Brooks National Hockey Center shortly before St. Cloud State University’s hockey game.
The names of the two who were arrested weren’t immediately available.
Isuru Herath, who is a graduate student at St. Cloud State, said the protesters were calling for immediate relief of student debt. He said the protest was led by the People’s Collective at SCSU, along with support from other groups including Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities). Herath said the group was not given any order to disperse.
“This was set up today to disrupt the hockey game,” Herathsaid, gesturing to the hockey center, “and this serves as a capitalist interest base of the university.” The People’s Collective was calling for various moves, including an immediate decrease in tuition cost.
Students from the People’s Collective blocked entrances to parking lots and the doors to Herb Brooks National Hockey Center Saturday night to protest student loan debt.
The two arrested students could be charged with trespassing, Lt. Jim Mortenson said. The group of about 25 first blocked the area at 15th Street and Fourth Avenue, then it moved to block another parking lot entrance before blocking the entrance doors, he said. He said at most they held up traffic for maybe 15 minutes at one of the stops.
Once police arrested the two students, the protesters moved away from blocking the entrance doors, Mortenson said. He said they blocked it for a minute or less. The students then moved to the area across from the entrance doors to continue their protest as fans streamed into the arena.
“This is St. Cloud State property right here, and so (SCSU officials) made the call that … they wanted them off their property,” said Mortenson, noting that the entrance doors are fire exits. “Once we got them out of the way, then all the patrons were allowed to get in.”
The St. Cloud State officials on scene Saturday night declined any comment until Monday.
Herath and other protesters shared statistics about university and Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System officials’ salaries. Those numbers are a significant contrast to what most students live with, he said.
“Most of our students are going hungry, they’re homeless, they can’t pay for rent, and they’re seeing $25,000 to $300,000 to get an education, and there’s no chance for us to pay that back,” Herath said.
Read: http://www.sctimes.com/story/news/local/2016/02/27/2-arrested-protest-huskies-hockey-game/81056714/
