A group of students seeking 24-hour access to computer and study areas on campus held a short sit-in at the Flawn Academic Center early Thursday morning.
University police briefly detained two students, biochemistry senior Sanjay Bapat and biology senior Nathan Moore, for "suspicious activity" after they refused to leave the FAC at closing hours, according to a UT Police Department report. When the FAC closed at 2 a.m., the security guard on duty asked the group to leave. After they refused his request, he called UTPD, according to an incident report filed by Officer Benjamin Mewis.
The University Co-op has agreed to offer financial backing to keep the FAC open 24 hours a day but is still working on finalizing a plan, said Student Government President Danielle Rugoff.
"Anyone who had bothered to check with us or the minutes from our meetings would know that we had been working on this for about a month," said the government senior.
Bapat said he was studying in the FAC when a student gave him a flier asking students to participate in the sit-in. Roughly 35 students refused to leave when the security guard initially approached the group, and when UTPD arrived, 20 students remained, he added.
The number of students is not mentioned in the incident report, nor are the names of any additional students involved.
"We should have a place where we can study and access computers whenever we need to," Bapat said.
According to the incident report, Bapat said he would leave but was likely to return the next day. Thursday afternoon, Bapat said he did not know whether another sit-in was planned for Friday morning, but said he would not attend.
The Texan could not ascertain who organized the protest or authored the flier. Bapat and Moore said they did not know who organized the protest, but agreed with the organizer's intent, prompting their involvement.
UTPD and Student Government were also unable to determine the organizer's identity. Rugoff said she was not aware of any SG representatives who were involved in the incident.
The FAC was open 24 hours a day through last spring when, because of financial concerns, Information Technology Services decided to limit access hours, said Damon Jaggars, associate director of UT libraries. ITS manages the FAC.
The issue had become a sore spot for some students, eliciting a number of e-mails to Student Government, Rugoff said.
"The flier said we had petitioned for additional hours, but we never had to," she added. "The moment ITS heard we had problems, they started to work with us."
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