ABBIE MILLER
Editor in Chief
DAN QUAGLIANA
Managing Editor
On May 9, a group of SUNY Fredonia students organized a sit-in with the goal of supporting Palestinians impacted by the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
From 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., students sat outside University Commons with signs advocating for Palestine and for SUNY to divest from Israel and Israel-based companies.
To divest from something means the opposite of to invest in something. In this case, the organizers of the sit-in wished for SUNY to stop investing in and accepting funds from organizations with ties to Israel.
These are similar aims to the recent protests at Columbia University in New York City.
Columbia’s protests came to a sudden end when the New York Police Department (NYPD) was called onto campus by Minouche Shafik, Columbia’s president, to disperse the protests there. This marks one example of protests being abruptly halted by police out of a string of similar instances throughout other universities across the United States.
“We just want to show solidarity with the Palestinian people and additionally with all the other SUNY protestors, the students and the faculty that have been unjustly punished, suspended, fired, beaten [and] arrested,” said Bug Medrano, a junior music composition major and one of the organizers of the Fredonia sit-in. “We’re showing solidarity today. Our goal was to do a peaceful sit-in and we did that, and I’m very proud of it.”
Medrano organized the protest, along with one Fredonia alum and a current senior who both wished to be kept anonymous out of concern that they will receive backlash from administration.
When asked what inspired the sit-in, Medrano explained, “Palestinians, because despite all of the constant bombardment and the amount of injustice and harshness they’re living with, they’re still fighting and they’re still getting the word out there. So who am I to not try to amplify that?”
Medrano continued by saying, “It is something that is fixable. It is something that the U.S. has direct involvement with. We are, as a country, sending money that is killing people, and SUNY unfortunately is a part of that.”
According to The Washington Post, since Oct. 7, 2023, the U.S. federal government has provided large amounts of weapons and military aid to Israel in support of its attack on Gaza. While at least two of these transactions have been made public, government officials have informed Congress that over 100 private transactions have occurred.
In the 2024 Presidential Debate, current President Joe Biden additionally acknowledged the amount of funding that America has given Israel throughout the war, calling the United States “the biggest producers of support for Israel of anyone in the world.”
“After seeing what’s been going on in the world for over six months now, it felt like something needed to happen, especially here, where we are very politically liberal but also silent on a lot of major world events that it seems like it would be in line with Fredonia’s morals to be louder about,” said another organizer of the sit-in. “So we wanted to be the change in our community that we were hoping to see, because if we didn’t do it, who was going to?”
Diane Clark, a resident of the Fredonia area who attended the protest, said, “I’m very positively impressed with these students who, in addition to classes and everything else that goes on on the campus, are being involved in world affairs. That tells me that there’s a maturity and a consciousness on this campus that’s really important.”
Over the course of the day, a counter-protest also cropped up in the vicinity of the sit-in for Palestine, but this one was in support of the Israeli hostages that Hamas kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023 — the action that immediately precipitated the prolonged war in Gaza.
Regarding the counter-protesters, an anonymous attendee of the sit-in described the pro-Palestine event as “peaceful, …[even] when [the] counter-protesters were not.”
Video footage taken of a portion of the protest showed counter-protestors being approached by members of University Police, who escorted them away from the sit-in after they began yelling at attendees.
“I think it’s important to know that … we’re not here to endorse acts of terrorism,” remarked an anonymous attendee. “We’re not here to endorse war crimes. We’re here to make a point that there is a genocide happening.”
Additionally, one of the sit-in’s organizers stated, “I think it’s important because we’re at this point in history where … we have these records of all these other political movements where there’s a clear aggressor, there’s a clear divergence of power … The U.S. has stopped allying with aggressive powers before. They could do it again … SUNY has divested before. They could do it again.”
SUNY’s involvement in support of Israel was reiterated by SUNY Chancellor John B. King in April. King also stated that, despite criticisms, SUNY would not be divesting from Israel.
The event’s organizers stated that, above all, the purpose of the protest was to “show solidarity [for] students that have been persecuted for exercising their First Amendment rights [and for] Palestinians and Gazans who’ve been unjustly displaced and subjected to a genocide.”
Sources:
https://www.npr.org/2024/06/28/nx-s1-5021970/presidential-debate-biden-trump
https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2024/04/suny-stands-with-israel-amid-protests-00154557