Making college campuses as hostages and bargain chips for certain demand is (insert_name) behavior.
Well, that's democracy for you. You preach it, be ready for it when demonstrators don't voice your will.
A lot better than taking hostage an entire city I guess ?But I admit, these are milder than took airplane passengers as hostages and bargain chip like PLO back then tho.

200 bus routes cancelled as Hong Kong pro-democracy protest intensifies
London, Sep 29 (ANI): Thousands of people protesting against China's decision to vet candidates in Hong Kong's 2017 elections have refused to budge from the government complex in Hong Kong for another day, despite appeals to leave, a report said.
Talking about in favor of authoritarianism, if you live in China, maybe they gonna put you to their reeducation camp without clear reason but their vonis of you are an ETIM sympathizer. You can only bow to them, be under their heels of untransparent and unaccountable (as it should) authoritarian government. That’s the perks of autocracies that you like, right?
Rule #1 in international politics, there's no such thing as good or bad let alone authoritarianism.
Countries react to events and escalate accordingly towards their perceived threat. For the Chinese having a million or so potential foreign agent like the one we see in Hong Kong, demand Beijing to crack down on protests forcibly. For the U.S., the mere sit down while chanting the shout 'free Palestine' and 'from the river to the sea' demands the U.S. to deploy the national guard + snipers on top of buildings + excess use of physical force.
So there's no such thing as 'free' or 'authoritarian' society. The actions of a country will depend on the issue and situation. And what they perceive as a redline will be guaranteed different.
The U.S. and the West spent billions trying to portray democracy as the only option, For them democracy = good = civilized = deserve support, even though it has nothing to do with such. Thank god events around the world are proving this wrong, democracy as we can see is no different than any secular political system that comes out from the West (Fascism, Socialism, Communism, etc). It's just they're so good at cosmetics.