UT Divest put to vote
April 22, 2015
Filed under News, Top Stories
From an idea shared by a few students to a movement involving hundreds of supporters, UT Divest is making noise on the University of Toledo campus with its referendum this week.
The referendum, which went live April 20, asks the student body whether they think the UT Board of Trustees and the UT Foundation should divest from companies “complicit in the Israeli occupation of Palestine” until the companies are no longer involved in those actions.
The Beginning
Students for Justice in Palestine began raising awareness for their divestment campaign at their annual Apartheid Wall event in October 2014.
According to Shahrazad Hamdah, an SJP steering committee member, the idea began as an international movement, and 2014 was when SJP decided to begin taking action on it.
“It was a call from Palestinian civil society saying that they wanted to try and get institutions all over the world to boycott Israel, boycott companies that are complicit in Israeli human rights violations, just because that’s the only thing that will only change the situation,” Hamdah said.
UT isn’t the first school to consider divestment. Harvard and MIT were the first two schools to propose divestment on their campuses, followed by Loyola University, the University of Michigan, and University of California Berkeley.
The movement has gained attention from multiple student organizations; the International Student Association, Jewish Voices for Peace, and Community Solidarity Response Network have all voiced public support for the campaign.
It was a call from Palestinian civil society saying that they wanted to try … to boycott Israel, boycott companies that are complicit in Israeli human rights violations.”
— Shahrazad Hamdah, SJP steering committee member
Tensions Rising
The campaign generated emotionally-charged debate from both sides of the issue, especially during Student Government meetings addressing legislation related to it.
UT Hillel and members of groups like Christians United for Israel and the Jewish Federation of Toledo strongly opposed both the resolution and referendum on the issue. Jessica Moses, president of UT Hillel, said the campaign will create a negative campus atmosphere.
“It’s a very negative-based campaign, and when students hear about it and they start realizing what they’re [divestment supporters] trying to say about Israel and people who support Israel, I think it’s just going to bring a negative influence on campus,” Moses said.
Moses said she would prefer not to comment on whether she knew of any discrimination against Jewish students after the resolution passed.
SJP steering committee member and SG senator Sam Aburaad said he faced an attempted impeachment over his activities in the UT Divest campaign.
“I was attacked for exercising my right of free speech, and I was put up for impeachment for speaking for the students,” Aburaad said. “It was made to sound like it was my conduct, but it was thinly veiled. It was definitely about Divest.”
Aburaad said discriminatory remarks were left on pro-divestment posters. He made a police report to keep the incident on file.
I was attacked for exercising my right of free speech, and I was put up for impeachment for speaking for the students. It was made to sound like it was my conduct, but it was thinly veiled. It was definitely about Divest.”
— Sam Aburaad, SJP steering committee member and SG senator
“On our various flyers and posters around campus, we’ve gotten notes like ‘go back to your country, you guys are terrorists,’ that sort of thing,” Aburaad said.
Turmoil in Student Government
Initially, the proposed resolution was ruled unconstitutional by SG’s Student Judicial Council in a vote of 5-4 after presentations from both sides of the argument.
On March 2, attorneys from Palestine Solidarity Legal Support and the Center for Constitutional Rights sent a letter formally challenging how SG ran their meeting, claiming that SG had violated SJP’s first amendment rights and the Ohio Open Meetings Act.
SJP also organized a petition calling for SG to reverse their decision. According to Ide, the petition had over 5,300 signatures from 43 countries and over 50 organizations.
In response, SG overturned their decision of unconstitutionality. A revised version of the resolution was proposed and passed two weeks later with a vote of 21-4.
Both throughout and after the resolution passed, SG came under criticism from members of both sides for their handling of the process.
Jacob Richart, a freshman at UT, said during the March 3 meeting he felt that SG overturning their decision of unconstitutionality was a result of manipulation.
“What these past two weeks have taught me is that bullying is an accepted form of currency at UT,” Richart said during the meeting. “What these past two weeks have taught me is to expect intimidation and manipulation of my peers at UT.”
During the same meeting, Moses also said she felt that revisiting the vote undermined SG, and that it was a result of external pressure from members outside the UT community.
“We must consider who we permit to give voice on our campus community,” Moses said. “The process of the reintroduction of this vote has come to you through external individuals, wanting to influence a campus issue.”
Nadeen Sarsour, a member of both SG and SJP believes the outcome was ultimately a positive one.
“I think it was a really good experience, not only for us [SJP], but for student government,” Sarsour said. “Because I think we got to have a really good dialogue with them, and everything we did, we wanted them to be along with, because they’re our representatives.”
Wording changes cause controversy
On April 20, the first day of voting for the referendum, members of SJP and supporting organizations met with the SG steering committee to discuss changes made to the referendum after it had passed.
The changes were discussed and agreed upon by SG president Clayton Notestine, SJC justice Dillon Marx, and Tamika Mitchell, the dean of students.
Mitchell said “the language of the referendum was clarified to ensure the topic was presented neutrally and the issue was clear to voters.”
Ide said the fact the referendum text was changed after the SG body had already voted on it was underhanded. He felt it was wrong to imply that SJP was the only student organization supporting divestment.
What these past two weeks have taught me is that bullying is an accepted form of currency at UT. What these past two weeks have taught me is to expect intimidation and manipulation of my peers at UT.”
— Jacob Richart, UT freshman
“We believe it’s a dirty, sly tactic to unilaterally change something that everyone had already agreed upon,” Ide said.
The outcome
The day after the divestment resolution passed, Interim President Nagi Naganathan and UT Foundation President Brenda Lee released a statement which read that UT had no plans to divest from companies involved with Israel.
“Just like at many universities and colleges across the nation where during the last 15 years this debate has taken place, The University of Toledo and the UT Foundation do not support divesting from companies that engage in business with Israel,” the statement said.
The statement released was the university’s only statement on the matter.
Hamdah said the decision was not a surprise, and it would not prevent the supporters from trying to change the administration’s mind.
“I think we expected it. It doesn’t make us lose hope or anything,” Hamdah said. “We’re still strategizing on how we can kind of reach out to the administration and tell them where we’re coming from.”
Moses said divesting from companies with ties to Israel would hurt students in their searches for future jobs.
“I do think that if you start divesting from companies that are fully invested in the University of Toledo, like GE who basically built the engineering campus, it’ll start hurting … opportunities for students here on campus,” Moses said.
Moses said she thinks UT probably won’t divest at any point from the companies outlined in the resolution.
Sarsour said the goal of the movement was something bigger than UT itself, and isn’t going to be settled by UT’s decision one way or another.
“This isn’t really something us as a university can resolve,” Sarsour said. “The purpose of the campaign is we’re joining the rest of the nation and the international community in divesting from these corporations.”
