A UC Berkeley hunger strike, now in its eighth day, has turned far more confrontational.

The hunger strikers have been camped out in front of the campus’s California Hall since last weekend, mostly without incident. But around dawn today, word came that Berkeley police would be rousting the group.

Reports on Twitter early this morning suggested that wi-fi had been turned off in the vicinity of the demonstrators as police gathered. It was claimed that the university was planning to turn on lawn sprinklers as a method of crowd dispersal, though that apparently didn’t come to pass — perhaps because campus workers refused to comply with the order.

Shortly before noon Pacific Time, it was reported that a group of protesters had for the first time taken up positions blocking the entrance to California Hall, site of administration offices.

The hunger strikers have a blog called Hungry for Justice, and tweets from the scene have been coming through this morning from @hungry4justice, @callie_hoo, and @shaneboyle. I’ll have more on the story as news develops, both here and on Twitter.