UPDATES: A Multi-Pronged Organizing Push
It’s been over 400 days of genocide and Indiana University has refused to acknowledge or address its role in perpetuating the US-backed campaign of mass murder.
Over the last year, students, staff and faculty have mobilized in order to speak out against the support for war crimes, and push the university to actually embody the values it claims to possess. As we saw in the Liberated Zone, when the university isn’t meeting dissenting voices with silence, it meets them with violence and repression.
But these past few days a number of incidents have demonstrated that despite these attacks, students’ resolve has never been stronger.
As noted in our last newsletter entry, organizers from the Indiana University Divestment Coalition rallied to present reasonable demands for disclosure and divestiture. The demands included a deadline - Jan 13, the start of Spring Semester - for the administration to respond. If that date passes without a satisfactory resolution, organizers plan to dramatically increase their organizing efforts in a way that adequately meets the moment.
Students waited outside of the IU administration building until the demands were finally picked up and acknowledged.
In addition to the physical copy, organizers also sent emails to everyone they wanted to notify. The message was addressed to President Pam Whitten, Provost Raul Shrivastav and the Board Of Trustees. The next morning, IUDC received confirmation that the office had received our email.
However, organizers received no response from the office of the Provost or the President. To hammer the message home, organizers confronted the IU administration in actions the following day. Provost Rahul Shrivastav was tracked to a night at the Opera where he was served the petition, removing his ability to credibly claim ignorance on the subject as he has done in the past.
Earlier that day, organizers went all the way to Fort Wayne, IN to get the attention of the elusive President Whitten at the Board of Trustees meeting:
They made sure she got the message:
Hopefully, now that Whitten, Shrivastav and the Board of Trustees are aware of IUDC demands, they’ll take the next steps to ensure that their institution embodies the values it claims to represent. But that wasn’t all that happened!
That same day, the ACLU and plaintiffs suing IU regarding the attack in Dunn meadow convened in Indianapolis for what was supposed to be a settlement conference. Because of the blatant unconstitutionality of the speech restriction policy they implemented this August and the related lawsuit, the IU Board of Trustees felt compelled to revisit and alter the policy. The board decided to vote on the changes the same day as the settlement conference. Thus, any discussion about the policy in the context of the settlement would need to wait.
As it turns out, the threat of mobilizations and lawsuits compelled IU to relax some of its policies. While the new policy is still constitutionally dubious, and the university can still be expected to use whatever tools at its disposal to silence voices for Palestine, what this shows is that collective action CAN AND DOES have impacts on university policy.
This was a major week for the movement on campus. Organizers made their voices heard in numerous ways and have thrown down the gauntlet. The University has until the beginning of next semester to respond to IUDC demands, or the group will redouble its organizing efforts to meet the needs of this increasingly dire situation.
IUDC is building for the next semester and would love to have you as part of the fight. Pleas sign up for IUDC onboarding if interested.
Free Palestine!