More than 50% of the protesters are not even students

Rather data rich reporting in More Than 1,600 Pro-Hamas Activists at 33 Schools Arrested Since Gaza Encampments Began by Joshua Arnold.  

I have had the general sense that the Pro-Hamas campaign has been largely manufactured.  Whether from youthful idiocy or malevolent activists I can't quite tell.  There just seems to be a rent-a-mob aspect to the dynamics on all the videos I have seen.

Two other impressions.  The mobs seem to be primarily constituted of two distinct groups.  One are older individuals, more often male, who do not appear to be students.  The other is the female, overweight, pierced, tattooed, bright dyed hair demographic.  I haven't been able to put numbers to either of these impressions but it seems real.

A final impression.  For all that there are many protests and a very few are sizable, most that I have seen are modest affairs.  50 protesters.  Maybe a 100.  In a few instances a couple of hundred.  Columbia University seems to have been by far the largest and even there they don't seem to have more than 500 or 1,000 protesters at a given rally.  

But not anything really large.  And almost always more press and gawkers than protesters.  Again, very much a feel of a contrived event.  Enhanced by the awkward, faltering chanting of awkward slogans.  Oh, and the manufactured uniform signs.   

Arnold does provide some support for the impression about the non-student element.

Fourth, outside agitators have become involved to an alarming extent. Police made arrests at 22 universities from Saturday to Tuesday; and, in 11 out of 12 instances where the numbers are known, they arrested more outsiders than students. In multiple instances, these outside agitators even participated in illegally occupying campus buildings. It is unacceptable that a handful of activists, with no connection to a university, can seize its property and hold it hostage to absurd demands.

So for where we have the data, at 92% of student pro-Hamas protests, more than 50% of the protestors are not even students.  

This is kind of a critical point given how the mainstream media is playing these up as "student" protests.  I was listening to NPR yesterday and the reporter was making the claim that the protests demonstrated that students wanted the university to divest from Israel.  That was patently only true if the protestors actually reflected the wishes of all students which seemed unlikely.  And it is especially untrue if most the protesters are not even students.  

If we assume that Columbia has had the largest protests and also assume that there were a 1,000 protesters (I haven't seen any report of a number that large, but being generous), that is still a mere 3% of the 36,649 students enrolled.  Representative?  I think not.  Especially considering that it is estimated that 22 percent of Columbia's students are Jewish.