I hope these protests continue to spread with the same departmental support. There is already massive tension between department faculty and admins at many universities and a huge wave of grad student unionisation in response to terrible working conditions facing both them and non-tenured professors. If they can build solidarity strikes with the anti-Zionist students, the scope of the unrest can expand. Any attack on them by police means a response from UAW since that’s who they’re with.
The relevant Senate committee was not consulted, as required by university rules
This has been one of the most wild things about the universities responses to these protests. Most of them are breaking their own internal rules with the way they’re responding! Most universities have both a student government and faculty senate (staff can get fucked) and at most universities those two bodies have to be consulted at some level before you can do things like call in outside cops and mass suspend/expel students.
A bunch of university presidents are going to lose their jobs over this, depending on the power of their faculty senate, all for something they could’ve just left alone. None of these encampments were even really disrupting normal activities, you could’ve just left them there and they’d probably go away after a few weeks.
Instead you threw a temper tantrum, broke your own rules, and in many cases broke state or federal law as well - The uni I work at is now being sued for violating the ADA because they arrested a disabled student for having a chair in the quad. My president unfortunately won’t lose his job for this, his hiring broke state law and university rules in the first place and was opposed by the faculty senate and student government, and forced through by ronald, but at a lot of schools the faculty senate has more power than it does here.
i’m sure if the university president loses his job over it, he’ll be rewarded somehow for his selfless sacrifice for the greater good. so i dont see how this is a real downside for them.
9 people arrested last night, DeSantis wants them to be expelled. It’s been smaller than most, and by that nature less disruptive and “violent” than the others. There were a couple hundred people on the second day, but through the nights it hasn’t been many at all.
It’s heartening to hear that there are folks in Florida that care about Palestine like that. I hope there are some faculty sympathies to encourage student resolve. I remember my profs giving us support at the start of the Trump years, especially when that vile Richard Spencer tried to come to campus.
I keep thinking about when Richard Spencer came and how different the response was to this. They fought tooth and nail to make sure he was able to speak. They spent millions on security to protect him and his Nazi friends. But as soon as they saw a keffiyeh in the plaza they called in state troopers.
The contrast really shows the beliefs of the people in power and to what lengths they will go to when they feel that their power structures are threatened.
The donors and the administration don’t give a fuck about what a model UN senate faculty Senate and student government says. They don’t have any power.
It very much depends on the school. Some they have basically no power, but at some they have binding powers. I’m pretty sure Columbia is the latter but I’m not that familiar with it.
Even the schools that pretend to have binding/meaningful senates, there’s usually a presidential veto that ultimately works for the board of trustees (the biggest Zionists in the school system). There was a college in California where students and staff voted twice in the last 5 years to divest from Israel and were vetoed both times
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