Rutgers student encampment ends peacefully with agreement. Here are the details

A peaceful resolution to a four day standoff at a student encampment at the Rutgers-New Brunswick campus protesting Israel's attacks on Gaza cooled tensions and put to rest fears of violent escalation on a hot Thursday afternoon.

University leaders agreed to several of a 10-point list of demands from the protesters, including a commitment to explore creating an Arab cultural center, to implement support for 10 displaced Palestinian students to finish their education at Rutgers, and to follow university policy and review the student movement's main demand that universities divest from companies with business interests in Israel.

University President Jonathan Holloway and the chairman of the Joint Committee on Investments agreed tomeet with up to five student representatives to discuss the protesters' divestment request, provided they cleared the encampment.

The students also demanded amnesty for all protest participants. The university said it would not retaliate by terminating jobs or reducing pay, but said individual students "were subject" to the university's code of conduct.

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The demands and final agreement were laid out in a message from Rutgers-New Brunswick chancellor Francine Conway, sent out after students in the encampment began rolling up tents and blankets and walking away late Thursday.

As part of the agreement, Rutgers said it will "revisit and follow up on the relationship established in 2022 with Birzeit University to explore avenues of research collaboration and scholarly exchange, and the feasibility of student exchange and/or study abroad through RU Global Studies." Birzeit is in the Palestinian West Bank.

Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois became the first U.S. school to publicly announce a deal with protesters on Monday, which was followed by Brown University's announcement on Tuesday of an agreement with student organizers to curb protest activity on the Ivy league campus in Providence, Rhode Island, on Tuesday in exchange for the Brown Corporation voting on a divestment measure in October.

The afternoon's events came hours after police broke up protests at UCLA and Columbia University, arresting hundreds of students. At nearby Princeton University, 13 students were arrested Monday night, and some protesters announced a hunger strike and fast Friday until the university engages with their demands, organizers said.

An encampment on Rutgers' Newark campus is still active.

At Rutgers-New Brunswick, the protesting students and Holloway welcomed reaching an agreement before a 4 p.m. Thursday deadline issued by Holloway for students to vacate the greens on College Avenue after morning exams were postponed.

The agreement signals a peaceful finals week and end of semester in New Brunswick after a contentious 12 months for Holloway, who last year at this time was navigating an unprecedented faculty strike.

Several faculty members and adjunct professors in the AAUP union's black, white and red T-shirts showed up at the tents on College Avenue to support the students' right to protest peacefully. Union leaders said that in addition to supporting free speech, many felt they owed support to students, which included many pro-Palestinian protesters who had supported them during last years' walkout that halted classes for a week.

Some exams scheduled for the afternoon Thursday were moved, and students were told to check for updates with their departments.

Students cheered and chanted, "Free, Free Palestine," after an organizer read out a draft of the agreement. A smaller group called out a Muslim religious chant. Hours before, with the deadline to vacate looming and several police cars parked around the green, the group had chanted "Holloway is a tyrant."

Students in the encampment debated what to do if they could not arrive on an agreement with university leaders. The consensus at one point was to stay within the encampment and protect it.

“I am in full support of protecting the encampment but I do not support mass arrests,” said one student. He said he did not want a "military response" like Columbia. The crowd listened. He was referring to the fact that earlier in the week Columbia University sent NYPD officers onto its Ivy League campus to arrest more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators, some of whom had barricaded themselves into a building on the campus.

'A note of appreciation'

Negotiations between student organizers and Rutgers administrators ended sometime before 4 p.m., the deadline the university had given students to clear out. A cheer went through the crowd when a student addressed them, saying that progress had been made.

She was followed by a man who said he was Palestinian and a Rutgers alumnus who had lost generations of family members in Gaza during the Israeli attacks after Oct. 7, which occurred in retaliation to Hamas' attacks in Israel on Oct. 7 last year. He cautioned the students to "fight hard" and continue to ensure their demands were met, but not to escalate or make a spectacle of themselves.

Later that evening, Holloway sent out a message titled " A Note of Appreciation" thanking everyone "who worked to bring a peaceful end to the protest."

"At the beginning of the semester, I asked the community to reflect on ways that we can preserve our freedoms in the face of forces that will seek to divide us, how we can embrace them with the awesome responsibility they require — to be respectful and open-minded, to be intellectually honest and curious, and to be civil, decent, and understanding of one another," he said.

"We still have a great deal of work ahead and will continue to be tested. I ask everyone to be civil to one another, to be respectful of one another, and to embrace our shared humanity," the message said.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Rutgers, student protesters reach agreement, encampment ends