Do photos circulating on social media prove that pro-Palestinian college protesters in the U.S. are using largely identical tents? No, that's not true: While there is an abundance of green tents at the nationwide protests, images from multiple campuses show a broad variety of tents in the encampments. The green tents are sold at Walmart nationwide.
The claim about lookalike tents appeared in a post (archived here) on Facebook on April 30, 2024. It said:
well isn't that cute ,, matching tents
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Fri May 3 20:06:38 2024 UTC)
The post shows photos from Yale University, the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and the University of Michigan at encampments set up by pro-Palestinian protesters.
The ubiquitous green tents seen in the photos are available for sale to anyone on Walmart (archived here) for $39.97. However, those are not the only tents used at campus encampments across the country.
A Google search (archived here) for images of the tents at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, reveals a rainbow of different-colored tents, including orange, blue and yellow. This screenshot from Yale Daily News, the university's student newspaper, shows the variety of tents at the protest site:
(Source: Yale Daily News website screenshot taken on Fri May 3 20:25:12 2024 UTC)
A Google search (archived here) for images of encampment tents at UCLA in Los Angeles shows a variety of colors, including blue, red and orange. This screenshot from Daily Bruin, the UCLA student newspaper, shows, as at Yale, a diverse assortment of tents:
(Source: Daily Bruin website screenshot taken on Fri May 3 20:10:14 2024 UTC)
Tents at the University of Southern California are also a variety of colors, as this screenshot from Daily Trojan (archived here), the student newspaper, shows:
(Source: Daily Trojan website screenshot taken on Fri May 3 20:12:34 2024 UTC)
A keyword search of Getty Images, visible here (archived here), also shows encampments with a myriad of tent colors:
(Source: Getty Images website screenshot taken on Fri May 3 20:45:22 2024 UTC)
A keyword search of Associated Press newsroom images, visible here (archived here), showed a variety of colors of tents at the encampments.
Other Lead Stories fact checks of claims related to the U.S. campus protests and the Hamas-Israel war can be found here.
