In our many years of observing local governments, schools and colleges, your Editorial Team has seen a lot of people do a lot of things. Much more often that not, their motives are self-evident, or can be figured out with some thought and digging. But there are, like that small sliver of UFO sightings which defy explanation, some moves that leave us baffled.

And so it is with SUNY New Paltz President Darrell P. Wheeler. We know what he did — call in the police to remove a pro-Palestinian demonstration camping out in the quad. But for the life of us, we cannot figure out why he did it, and why he stepped in more controversy a little later by referring to Israel’s conduct in Gaza as “genocidal behavior occurring to Palestinian people and the people of Gaza.”

At some point on or before May 1, Wheeler made the fateful decision to get the police involved. In the early-morning minutes of May 2, 150 cops, including state troopers, sheriff’s deputies and local police, did what they were asked to do: remove the encampment. Some 132 on the scene were arrested; not all were students, but figures vary on how many non-students were rounded up. (Using the “out-of-town agitators” thing as justification for a crackdown is a time-honored tradition in after-the-fact damage control.)

Several students described being roughed up or humiliated in various ways, but there were only two documented injuries: one to a “civilian” at the scene, the other to a state police investigator on the scene who took a metal bottle to the face allegedly hurled by a demonstrator. The high number of arrests put the incident into the top five pro-Palestinian student protests in the nation in that category; an achievement that we somehow doubt college officials will highlight on the school’s website. It could’ve been a lot worse — students elsewhere have been on the receiving end of rubber bullets, tear gas and police beatdowns.

But it was bad enough to set off some serious pushback. On campus, along with a walkout and other public signs of dissent, over 100 faculty and staff signed a letter calling for Wheeler to quit, or if he won’t quit, be removed. A separate letter from the college’s Black Studies Department rebuked the college’s first Black president, advising him to absent himself from this weekend’s graduation ceremonies. “We do not believe he did what was in the best interest of our faculty, staff, students, and university community,” the letter reads. A Change.org petition also calling for Wheeler’s departure is, as of 3 p.m. Tuesday, up to 725 signatures.

It also became a political pickleball of sorts, with three of the county’s top elected officials, County Exec Jen Metzger, Sheriff Juan Figueroa and District Attorney Manny Nneji, making statements on the event in the days that followed. Nneji’s was first: he stood up for the right to protest peacefully and promised fair treatment for those arrested. (We’d assumed everyone gets fair treatment by the DA’s Office; maybe the kids are getting extra-fair treatment?) Then came a letter from Figueroa, who with Nneji was elected on a platform of progressive law enforcement. The sheriff detailed the demonstrators’ repeated refusal to do what they were told and highlighted police restraint at the scene: “Batons were displayed but not used to strike individuals,” he said, noting that the arrests were made “without resorting to pepper spray or tasers.” (Is that what they mean by “Upstate and Chill”?)

Just a few hours after the sheriff made his case, Metzger made a statement of her own: “The students were engaging in peaceful protest and standing up for what they fervently believe, and the response of law enforcement was disproportionate to the scene in front of them. … Students, faculty members, and community members have understandably expressed shock and dismay about what transpired that evening. Moving forward from here, much work must be done to rebuild trust, with open dialogue and communication about why events unfolded and escalated the way they did.” (A county official later tried to play down this very rare instance of two of Ulster’s top Dems not named March Gallagher disagreeing in public by saying that Metzger didn’t mean to include the sheriff’s office personnel in her critique. We remain unconvinced.)

Another damage control exercise on Wheeler’s part went badly. As per the Daily Freeman, at a May 7 meeting with students, faculty and community members, “Wheeler referred to Israeli policies as ‘genocidal behavior occurring to Palestinian people and the people of Gaza.’” Whether he came into the meeting intending to say this or spoke off the cuff is unclear, but had he thought carefully about it, he might not have said it. The use of the term “genocide” in regards to Gaza has become pretty common, a deliberate choice of word meant to intimidate Jewish people, who have had more than one indisputable genocide perpetrated on them throughout the centuries. It’s also wildly inaccurate, which can be demonstrated with a couple of hypotheticals. If the leadership of Hamas surrendered and turned over the hostages, would the war end? Without a doubt. If World War II ended with the Nazis still in power, would they have stopped killing Jews? Not a chance. Wheeler’s use of the term was offensive and only made his predicament worse. Now everyone is mad at him.

In Ulster County, where many have protested since the Vietnam War, it’s not surprising that the unprecedented police action at SUNY New Paltz has been called unjustified by many. Others say that the potential threat the protest posed to Jewish students and others who aren’t on their, or any side other than getting an education, made it an imperative. Protests elsewhere have generated antisemitic hate speech; while we have yet to hear or read anything from the New Paltz protest to indicate antisemitism was expressed there, it is undeniably a huge problem. A poll released Monday by U.S. News and World Report found that 67 percent of students at America’s top schools think it’s a problem. Thirty-eight percent of students report feeling unsafe. Maybe it’s time demonstrators checked their privilege, and their rhetoric.

One theory we have that might explain Wheeler’s decision is a simple one: he was told to do it. College protests have been a cudgel used by the GOP to pummel President Biden, so maybe his good friend Kathy Hochul wanted to help him out in some small way by projecting strength by proxy on campuses under state control. SUNY Chancellor John King’s telling City and State NY this week that “we certainly are going to review the steps that were taken in advance of the role of law enforcement in dispersing the protests” doesn’t disprove this theory in any way; many government probes are far more about hiding what actually happened than revealing it.

Your Editorial Team has reached out to Wheeler for an interview, but we haven’t heard back. It seems to us, though, that Wheeler has made his situation pretty close to untenable by alienating both the pro-Palestine and pro-Israeli camps. Leadership makes tough asks sometimes. In this case, it sounds like it’s asking Wheeler to step aside so his institution can start to get past this.