It was the death of a university student this month that set off the current round of protests and violence. Chow Tsz-lok, a student at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, sustained a fatal injury after falling from a parking garage near a police action on Nov. 4. Thousands attended candlelit memorial rallies last weekend, and his photograph is on posters and makeshift shrines all over campuses, since he is now a martyr for other students.
Roiled by the latest unrest, universities canceled classes from Monday to Friday. That meant protesters have been able to hit the streets at dawn on weekdays after sleeping a few hours. On campus, activists have sprayed fresh graffiti, including phrases cursing administrators.
The fraught situation led police officers on Wednesday to organize an evacuation of dozens of mainland Chinese students across the border to Shenzhen, where hotels offered them free rooms.
One graduate student at the University of Hong Kong said he and others from the mainland still felt safer on campuses than on the streets. He said many students do not openly express pro-Beijing opinions and sometimes avoid speaking loudly in Mandarin, the dominant language back home. (He spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the tensions.)
Some university departments have delayed recruitment drives of mainland and foreign students to come up with new strategies; a drop-off in enrollment by mainland graduate students, who often pay full tuition, would lead to budget problems.
Hong Kong’s public universities, which have more than 86,000 undergraduate and nearly 11,000 graduate students, each have distinct characters. That means the students have occupied different roles in the movement, and the protests have played out in different ways on each campus.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong, with 20,000 students, is considered the most radical campus. Most of its students are Cantonese-speaking locals, some of whom live nearby with their parents in dense apartment blocks. And the campus is high in the hills of Sha Tin, isolated from the city center, which is an hour’s ride away by subway.
On Monday, the police arrested five students on the campus’s edge, administrators said. The next morning, the police, still at the border, confronted front line students, and clashes took place over 20 hours. Rocky S. Tuan, the president, who has been known for trying to engage with students during the movement, showed up during a lull in the evening to urge the students to be calm.
“You all should know that I really want to help you. I will do everything within my capability,” he said. “It is the university’s responsibility to maintain peace on campus, not the police.”
But as Mr. Tuan began walking away, the police fired tear gas. Mr. Tuan himself was enveloped in the gas. Students set fires to keep the police from advancing, and scores formed human chains to pass along bricks, umbrellas and bottled water to the front lines. Students sitting on one patch of road made gasoline bombs as if on an assembly line.
“It was a savage move and a type of police violence when they tried to encroach on the university,” said Timothy Chow, 23, an engineering student who graduated in June. “This is why we have to protect our Chinese University of Hong Kong.”
“When I saw our compatriots and Chinese University staff being hurt by the police, I felt particularly furious and wanted to come back to defend our university,” he added.
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