Pro-Palestine student group suspended at Case Western Reserve University
CLEVELAND (WJW) — Case Western Reserve University officials have suspended the student group CWRU Students for Justice in Palestine, alleging violations of the university’s student code of conduct.
Several members of the group were accused of “[gluing] fliers to various surfaces around campus,” including on the spirit wall and near Adelbert Hall on three separate days, according to a Feb. 26 letter to the group from Associate Dean of Students George O’Connell announcing the group’s temporary loss of recognition by the university.
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The university’s Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards contacted group members on four separate occasions, to ask about the incidents and receive a list of the group’s members, but the group didn’t comply, according to the letter.
The group’s suspension means it’s no longer eligible for privileges the university offers to student groups, including funding.
The group responded in a statement posted to its Instagram page, which reads, in part:
On February 26, CWRU imposed an interim suspension on SJP with the alleged goal of ‘preserv[ing] property.’
The interim suspension is another example of the hostility with which CWRU administration treats SJP with. This reaction is a clear pattern of suppression of students’ 1st Amendment rights in this time of much needed advocacy for Palestine.
…
CWRU is committed to pitting students against one another, forcing us into rooms with false promises of protection and no grounds of defense. They reject any understanding towards what can be deemed the biggest political catastrophe of our generation.
Instead, President [Eric] Kaler’s administration has deliberately targeted and harassed SJP members, going as far as to send blatant threats founded on anti-Palestinian sentiments.
Now it is permanent: the relationship between CWRU administration and its students is forever tainted by its deliberate creation of a hostile and unsafe student environment as a way to ignore their own complicit role in shedding Palestinian blood.
Statement from CWRU Students for Justice in Palestine
The group can be reinstated if it offers up the names of the students believed to have posted the fliers, as well as a current roster of its members, and meets with the university’s conduct office “to investigate and resolve the incidents.” Otherwise, the group may face further sanctions, according to the letter.
The students group is now asking supporters to write administrators and call for the group’s immediate reinstatement.
“You can try to shut our organizations down, but you can’t stop the movement from growing,” the group wrote on Instagram. “You can’t stop us from striving to create the change we desire to see and our hearts from yearning for justice and liberation.”
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Conflict in Israel ignited in October when the militant group Hamas launched an invasion, killing at least 1,400 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to The Associated Press.
Since then, more than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war on Hamas, according to Gaza health officials. Many Palestinians cut off from aid now face starvation, and many more have fled their homes, the United Nations reported.
The U.N. human rights office said in a report published Friday that the establishment and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem amount to a war crime, AP reported Friday.
“The West Bank is already in crisis. Yet, settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state,” U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said.
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