The University of Michigan Gaza solidarity encampment, organized by the TAHRIR Coalition to call for the University to divest from companies profiting from the ongoing Israeli military campaign in Gaza, remained a constant presence on the Diag for nearly a month before the University cleared the site on May 21. The removal of the encampment prompted responses, both positive and negative, from across the U-M campus and the Ann Arbor community.
In an email to The Michigan Daily on the day the encampment was swept, University spokesperson Colleen Mastony said the University values freedom of speech, but decided to clear the encampment due to fire safety concerns raised a few days prior.
“The University of Michigan has always recognized the importance of free speech and expression, but we also have a duty to protect students, faculty, staff and visitors to our campus,” Mastony wrote. “Following a May 17 inspection by the University fire marshal, who determined that if a fire were to occur, a catastrophic loss of life was likely, and subsequent refusal by camp occupants to remove fire hazards, the University this morning removed the encampment on the Diag, an area that serves as our main quad. The disregard for safety directives was the latest in a series of troubling events centered on the encampment.”
The day after the clearing, members of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality, an organization within the TAHRIR Coalition, returned to the Diag to draw chalk outlines of the encampment on the ground. They also released a statement condemning University President Santa Ono’s message to the community, and claimed they were never contacted by a fire marshal about the encampment.
“Let us be clear: Ono and the Regents’ actions show that they are concerned only with the safety of their investments in genocide and the Israeli occupation of Palestine,” the statement read. “Their claims about safety were not only disingenuous but included outright lies. Ono cited a purported fire marshal’s inspection to justify the police raid, but the fire marshal never came to the encampment to inspect it or communicate with us, despite repeated requests for them to do so.”
Regent Sarah Hubbard (R) has been vocal in her defense of the University’s commitment to not divest from companies financially connected to Israel in order to protect the University’s endowment from external political pressures. In response, more than 30 pro-Palestine students and community members demonstrated outside her residence early in the morning on May 15. Protesters laid tents and fake corpses wrapped in bloody sheets on the front lawn, called for divestment and posted demands on the other regents’ doors.
In an interview with The Daily, Hubbard said although the demonstrations outside the regents’ homes played a role in the University’s decision, the primary reasons for removing the encampment were the fire hazards identified by the fire marshal.
“There are a number of things that played into the encampment removal,” Hubbard said. “Certainly, showing up at regents’ residences was one small part of it, but the bigger part was that there are serious safety concerns about them there. And really, very recently, the fire marshal had deemed the place unsafe. Encampment members brought in chicken wire to fortify a fence around the encampment and then also brought in big stacks of plywood. This all creates a serious fire hazard … that would be a big problem (for) getting them out of there and keeping them safe.”
Hubbard also said while she supports the University’s historic relationship with student protests, she believed the encampment had already conveyed its message.
“We needed to move forward and move that along,” Hubbard said. “It’s summer, school’s out. It’s time to move on. We’ve erred on the side of free speech and allowing the protest to continue. We have a rich history of protest at the University of Michigan and I’m appreciative of that, but at some point, the point has been made and we need to move on. And we reached that point today.”
Despite the sweep of the encampment, the TAHRIR Coalition and other pro-Palestine groups on campus have continued to protest. Hubbard said she knows the issue of divestment will remain important to the campus community, and acknowledged the need for more discussion surrounding the issue.
“We do expect this conversation to continue into the fall,” Hubbard said. “We know that this will continue to be something that a lot of our students and faculty and staff have a lot of passion about. We don’t know what form it will take but certainly broad discussion, diversity of thought; allowing all voices to be heard is something we’re going to continue to focus on into the fall.”
Some faculty, staff and students have condemned the University for removing the encampment. The University Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine organized an event titled “Take Back the Diag” Thursday afternoon, during which faculty, students and community members were invited to eat lunch and do remote work on the Diag in solidarity with Palestinians and student protests across the country. The University asked them to remove their tables and chairs from the space.
In an interview with The Daily at the event, Rackham student Sebastian Rivera said despite the University’s actions, students should remain focused on bringing attention to events in Palestine.
“I think we’re all here to support the people in Palestine right now,” Rivera said. “I think that regardless of what happens here, I think the focus needs to be on the atrocities that are happening right now in Gaza and particularly now in Rafah. I think that that’s why we’re all here because we want people to keep thinking about what’s going on there.”
Jesse Carr, assistant director for student learning and leadership at the Edward Ginsberg Center, told The Daily at the event that the manner in which the encampment was cleared does not align with the University’s purported values.
“I was pretty horrified to see footage of how the encampment was cleared violently with pepper spray and violence,” Carr said. “I don’t think that’s an appropriate way to engage with students who’ve been asking for a meeting and asking for dialogue. I don’t think it even matters how you feel about the underlying issues being protested, that’s just not in line with any University values. It’s certainly not in line with what got me working in higher education. So I’m here to say drop the charges, drop the trespassing citations. Engage with the students as fellow citizens.”
The Graduate Employees Organization also spoke out against the treatment of protesters by the University’s Division of Public Safety and Security during the sweep of the encampment and shared support for the encampment’s goals. In an interview with The Daily, GEO president Nicolas Juarez said the encampment brought a larger community together within the University.
“We had a lot of GEO members that were involved with the encampment as both organizers or people just sleeping there,” Juarez said. “I think one of the really beautiful things about the encampment was getting to see the immense public and community support there. In this moment, the University was transformed into sort of this collectivity or this community.”
Rackham student Nathan Kim, co-chair of the Housing Caucus for GEO, told The Daily protesters knew about the potential consequences of the encampment, but chose to protest in spite of the risks.
“The encampment was a highly organized affair,” Kim said. “We understood that we were undertaking something that was potentially dangerous and it eventually became a danger because the University came to attack us.”
Kim addressed the discussion of the encampment being a fire hazard, which was stated in Ono’s email to the University of Michigan community following its removal.
“We feel that this is just an outright lie,” Kim said. “There were no fire safety people that came to speak with us. When talking about fire safety in general, we had multiple fire extinguishers on site and we never had open flames. We would refuse donations like propane tanks or fuel of any kind because this was a concern from the beginning.”
Kim said he felt frustrated by the University’s resistance to meeting with pro-Palestine student organizations over the last few months.
“When the University is quick to meet with (University of Michigan) Hillel and when the (Board of) Regents set up meetings with Zionist organizations but refused to come a single time to the encampment where we have set up a literal table for them to sit out and talk with us, then you see what they actually stand for,” Kim said.
Many have also expressed concerns that the University’s actions in removing the encampment infringe on students’ civil liberties and right to protest. LSA sophomore Fiona Dunlop, co-chair of the University’s American Civil Liberties Union Undergraduate Chapter, told The Daily that students who believe their rights to have been compromised by University or DPSS can seek counsel from the ACLU of Michigan. Dunlop said it is important that students know what resources are available to them.
“If there’s anybody, considering the encampment or other situations, where they feel that their civil liberties have been trampled upon, they’re able to reach out to us or to the ACLU directly, and we can potentially get legal cases from there,” Dunlop said. “So it’s very important that people understand that these resources are available to them.”
Daily Summer News Editors Bronwyn Johnston, Marissa Corsi and Emma Lapp can be reached at jbronwyn@umich.edu, macorsi@umich.edu and emmalapp@umich.edu. Summer Managing News Editor Eilene Koo contributed to reporting. Summer Digital Managing Editor Sneha Dhandapani contributed to reporting.
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