Students from City College, part of the City University of New York, set up an encampment on their campus on Thursday, April 25, joining fellow students from Columbia University, New York University, and other college campuses across the nation to ask their administration to divest from Israel and protest the Israel-Hamas war.
The CUNY Solidarity Encampment, a student group, issued the following statement:
URGENT Message from the CUNY Gaza Solidarity Encampment
We, the CUNY Gaza Solidarity Encampment, demand that CUNY Central protect students at the CCNY encampment for Gaza from police intervention. We do not want the NYPD to be deployed against our fellow students, who are protesting CUNY’s investments in weapons manufacturers which arm the Israeli military in its genocidal assault on Gaza.
Per a Memorandum of Understanding between CUNY and the NYPD, the NYPD cannot enter CUNY campuses without permission from CUNY officials in non-emergency situations. We call upon CUNY campus administrators to strictly adhere to Board of Trustees Policy 7.071, and make all possible efforts to consult with the student body president(s) and the chair of the faculty governance body, before deciding whether to involve law enforcement. The present student protest does not constitute an emergency situation. It is a peaceful exercise of the students’ right to political expression, during a moment that calls on all people of conscience to do the same. As such, we demand that CUNY officials do not allow the NYPD onto campus.
We have seen how decisions by the Columbia and NYU administrations led to police brutality against innocent student protestors. CUNY is now faced with a crucial choice. It can join the ranks of deplorable university administrators who jeopardize the safety and wellbeing of its students, or it can stand on the right side of history. CUNY stood on the right side of history in 1984, when it voted to divest from South African apartheid, and it must do so again.
CUNY is the largest working class, Black and brown, public urban university system in the country. Our students’ solidarity with Palestine is a natural reflection of our commitment to freedom and justice for all oppressed peoples. Educating students as brave as those joining the encampment is an honor, and CUNY must treat it as such by protecting students from state-sponsored brutality.
