5 UC Merced Board of Regents members meet with campus protestors
MERCED, Calif. (KSEE/KGPE) – Thursday was the final day of the UC Board of Regents meeting at UC Merced, and protesters have returned once again to make their voices heard.
A meeting was agreed upon between some of the Regents and protesters, but not without some bumps in the road.
The third and final day of the UC Board of Regents meeting wrapped up at UC Merced on Thursday.
“I don’t know how you can stand here in front of us and act like everything is okay when it is indeed not. Protect your students, do the right thing, and divest now,” said a protestor during public comment on the final day of the Board of Regents meeting.
Just a couple hundred feet away from that meeting, a pro-Palestine encampment has remained since May 12. Protesters say they are hoping for more dialogue between them and the UC Regents.
“In our negotiations with the administration, we’re asking them to use their positionality to try and get us meetings with some of the higher ranking Regents rather than just the student Regents,” Students for Justice in Palestine representative Ari Huffman said.
Around noon, six UC Regents approached the encampments to talk to protesters during their lunch break. But there wasn’t much dialogue shared.
“We had six board of Regents come in, they had a security team as well. However, there were two hecklers. We had six seats set up for the Regents. And two of the hecklers took those seats and then proceeded to intercept every time we tried to ask a question,” Students for Justice in Palestine representative Noorulain Irshad said.
When the Regents returned to their meeting, the Heckler also left the encampment.
Around 3:30 p.m., five Regents returned to the encampment to answer questions and talk about topics like divestment from Israel for an hour.
It is unclear exactly how long the encampment will remain now that the UC Regents are leaving Merced, and that the summer semester begins May 20.
“Until we’re able to have tangible, written next steps provided by the administration, we’re going to continue to organize throughout the summer with the other UC’s and hopefully come back stronger as a system-wide unit,” Huffman said.
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