Students Call Upon Bowdoin College to Drop Charges Against Students Suspended for "Disruptive" Palestine Protest

SJP is calling for the school to drop the charges against the keffiyah wearing protesters, who created an indoor tent encampment and refused to leave to "escalate for Gaza"

Bowdoin College, an elite school with a 9% acceptance rate, suspended 8 students last week over their involvement in a pro-Palestine rally during which students took over a school building to create an indoor tent encampment to “escalate for Gaza.”

But students refuse to leave campus without a fight.

The “Bowdoin 8” — students who led the protest rallying for Gaza — will have their disciplinary meeting with the school officials soon to determine if they can ever resume classes or remain in their dorms.

“Disciplinary hearings for our 8 suspended classmates begin this week,” the Bowdoin SJP Instagram page posted today, Sunday at 2:00pm.

“Our peers who bravely remained in the encampment have been evicted from campus, unable to attend class, and are now being subjected to a flawed and non-transparent disciplinary process,” SJP claimed in today’s post.

“We will not be silent” they added. “Walk out of class and rally with us outside Moulton Union to demand amnesty for our peers” they announced, urging students and faculty to meet them to protest on Tuesday February 8th at 4:30pm.

During last week’s protest at Bowdoin, as the encampment size inside the school building swelled, administrators began cracking down. Students valiantly pledged to stay at the encampment until Bowdoin agreed to divest from Israel, a common demand that colleges across the United States are facing right now.

But eventually, school security got involved. They began requesting to see all students IDs. Over a few hours, dozens of students left in a scramble, and eight students remained.

"Bowdoin has chosen to crack down and repress the principled dissent of students who asked for nothing more than their institution to live up to its stated values. We are enraged by the weaponization of a disciplinary process against members of this community who have exhausted every other means of advocacy," SJP said in a statement this past Monday afternoon.

"Bowdoin's decision to scapegoat students for their failure to lead [divest from Israel] is a show of cowardice,” they added.

It should be noted that the “BDS movement”, also referred to as “Boycott, Divest and Sanction Israel movement” appears to have failed at every school it’s been tried at.

At many elite universities, the school SJP club pushes for a divestment vote every calendar year, usually targeted at Israeli specifically or an Israeli company, like Sabra Hummus. But just because students pass a majority vote in favor of divestment, it means nothing unless the school actually wants to divest.

And which colleges have chosen to divest? In theory, many colleges have made statements that are amenable to potential divestment from Israel, giving students what I call “the illusion of choice” — the idea that they are actually being “heard.”

But, at least in America, true divestment from Israel has remained elusive.

Search engine results reveal scant evidence any American university has actually kowtowed to their anti-Israel students, even as the BDS movement has gained steam in the recent two years after October 7th.

Many students believe schools will eventually cave-in. But college endowment managers are getting sick of political pressures and students demanding that schools disclose every single investment.

Former college endowment manager Gary Sernovitz wrote about this issue in the NYT.

To disclose investments “is like asking for the secret recipe for Coke” said Sernovitz.

“Even if an endowment could provide a list of every underlying investment, it would likely then be inundated for more calls to divest, for more discovered connections — however small — to Israel, and for reasons related to other offenses discoverable with an online search.”

“Why would there not be a Taiwanese student group demanding divestment from China, to dissuade an invasion? Other students demanding divestment from Big Tech, citing students’ mental health?

“Or demanding divestment from all of it… the hedge funds and private equity funds whose asset managers… [which] are not exactly healing American income inequality?”

This piece was written by Toni Airaksinen, Senior Editor of Liberty Affair and a journalist based in Delray Beach, Florida. Follow her on Substack, on X/Twitter @Toni_Airaksinen and on Instagram.