Students for Justice in Palestine at Chapman University said Thursday it reached an agreement with campus administration and will shut down its Gaza Solidarity Encampment that formed about two weeks ago, ahead of Friday’s start of commencement weekend.
The student group will be given time during a September meeting of the university board’s investment committee to present its requests on divesting from interests that support Israel and for transparency in investments.
It will also receive help from university officials on creating an effective presentation. And a university spokesperson said the board committee will vote on the student’s proposal.
The university will not pursue disciplinary action against students for their involvement in the encampment as long as it is cleared by noon on Friday.
The first campus graduation ceremony is planned at 10 a.m. on Friday, there is another at 12:30 p.m. and the big all-class ceremony – featuring guest speaker actor Bill Hader – is at 7 p.m.
There are a dozen ceremonies planned between Friday and Sunday.
The university provost has also agreed “to place urgency” behind the creation in the school’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Department of an advocate position for the support and education of students of Middle Eastern and North African descent.
“I’m overjoyed,” Duran Aziz, a first-year master’s student in the film studies program and vice president of the SJP group at Chapman said of the agreement.
“We thought that this offer was close to the best that we could take by the end of this semester because it gives us that meeting with the board,” he said. “It gives us the support from MENA and the DEI office, and, of course, it gives us the amnesty, as well. But I want to emphasize that to my knowledge, no students are facing disciplinary conduct charges due to involvement with the camp.”
Aziz acknowledged there is a possibility the university does not change any of its positions this fall after students make their pitch for divestment and disclosure.
“That’s actually our main concern right now,” he said. “While the president has approved us presenting to the investment committee of the board, there’s no guarantee that they will actually vote to disclose or divest.”
This summer, while most students involved with the encampment will be away from campus, Aziz said the plan is to “do a lot of research” on Chapman University’s investments to make the strongest pitch possible to the board. He admitted preparation for this will be a challenge since, as a private university, Chapman can withhold more financial information than public universities.
However, Aziz said the agreement SJP reached with the school includes a commitment from the university president, provost and dean of students to work with the group in early August so that it can fine tune the best possible presentation to the board. But, the burden is on SJP to prepare a list of suggested investments that the group will recommend to the board.
Since the camp was erected on May 2, Aziz said about 15 or 20 students have been spending most nights there and 500 unique visitors have checked into the encampment at least once.
On Thursday afternoon, the encampment was quiet with Aziz and only a handful of other people around. Aziz said his group plans to decamp on Friday morning.
The encampment is coming down, but “the hardest work for us lies ahead,” Aziz said.
The agreement was reached just as the other Gaza Solidarity Encampment in Orange County was dismantled at UC Irvine by police as they responded to a protest Wednesday. Negotiations between students and administration there had broken down last week when the university issued suspension notices to several participants in the encampment.
Staff Writer Destiny Torres contributed to this report.
