#UTDivest in the Media, Chronologically Ordered
UT student senate considers divesting from companies tied to Israeli occupation of Palestine
Monday, 2/16/2015
BY VANESSA McCRAY
BLADE STAFF WRITER
The University of Toledo’s student senate is expected to consider a resolution Tuesday calling for the university to divest from companies tied to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
University of Toledo Students for Justice in Palestine supports the resolution.
Student government President Clayton Notestine confirmed that the proposal’s backers intend to introduce it at an 8:15 p.m. student senate meeting in the student union. Mr. Notestine, who said he is neutral on the controversial topic, said he wants to make sure the meeting is conducted safely, though he doesn’t expect problems and expects it to be a well-attended meeting.
UT spokesman Jon Strunk said a UT police officer who routinely staffs the meeting will be present.
“At this point, we are confident that everyone will attend the meeting and debate according to the rules of the senate,” he said.
A draft of a resolution provided by Mr. Notestine calls for the University of Toledo Foundation to divest from mutual funds that invest in companies connected to occupation.
Representatives for the Students for Justice in Palestine could not be reached for immediate comment, but the group’s Facebook page described the resolution’s presentation as “the culminating action” of a campaign that has built since the group’s formation four years ago.
“We are on the forefront of the struggle against injustice, and this is something all UT students should be proud of, especially us SJP activists who have worked so hard for this over the years,” the message stated.
The resolution is opposed by the Jewish Federation of Greater Toledo and Hillel Greater Toledo, a campus Jewish organization. A statement released by Hillel characterized the proposed action as an attempt to “isolate and delegitimize Israel.”
We are concerned about the potential implication this will have in creating hostility against the small Jewish community at UT, and we are meeting members of the university administration and student leaders before the scheduled vote to alert them to the harm this resolution will cause not only to our Jewish community, but to the UT community at large,“ the statement read. ”We wish that the students who created this resolution had recognized and taken advantage of the opportunity for our community to exchange ideas and engage in civil dialogue about an issue that many of us care about. It is disappointing that they instead chose to engage in tactics that divide the campus community and prevent us from moving forward in a positive way.“
Similar resolutions have debated by student governments at other universities, with mixed results.
In 1986, the UT board of trustees agreed to withdraw investments in companies doing business in South Africa as part of a movement against apartheid.
If the divestment resolution is approved by the UT student senate, Mr. Notestine said he doesn’t plan to veto it, and the resolution would be forwarded to university administration.
Mr. Strunk would not say how administrators view the proposal.
“We’ll await the outcome,” he said. “We wouldn’t want to make it seem like we are influencing student government by deciding before they [decide].”
http://www.toledoblade.com/news/2015/02/16/UT-student-senate-considers-divesting-of-Israel.html
Ohio university imposes secrecy on divestment resolution
Submitted by Nora Barrows-Friedman on Tue, 02/17/2015 - 19:52
University of Toledo’s Students for Justice in Palestine constructed a mock version of Israel’s wall in the West Bank and campaigned for divestment last October. (UT-SJP Facebook page)
At the Unviersity of Toledo in Ohio tonight, student activists will argue in favor of a resolution to divest from US companies profiting from Israeli violations of Palestinian rights.
But the university administration is mandating that they must do so in a “closed meeting,” preventing both the resolution’s supporters, opposition and the general public from hearing presentations to the student government.
The resolution voting process will also be done by secret ballot, meaning that the student body won’t be able to know how their representatives voted on the resolution.
Derek Ide, a student at the University of Toledo and the co-founder of the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (UT-SJP), told The Electronic Intifada that the decision to close the hearing and force secret balloting “harms transparency and democracy.”
In recent months, students collected hundreds of signatures on campus supporting the resolution.
Students have identified the University of Toledo’s investments in Cemex, Rolls-Royce, General Electric and Hewlett-Packard, which contribute to or profit from Israel’s violations of Palestinians’ rights.
Ignoring alliances
The local Toledo Blade reports that the on-campus chapter of Hillel, a nationwide network of campus centers for Jewish students which opposes boycott and sanctions efforts, ”characterized the proposed action as an attempt to ‘isolate and delegitimize Israel.’”
Ide said that Hillel brought in the Jewish Federation of Toledo to lead the campaign to derail the divestment resolution. The group is affiliated with a national network called the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA). In 2010, JFNA and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs launched the “Israel Action Network,” described as “a multimillion-dollar joint initiative to combat anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns” and to fight “the delegitimizing of the State of Israel.”
Earlier this week, the student government announced that two of the five speakers against the divestment resolution would be non-student representatives of the Jewish Federation of Toledo. But by this morning, Ide told The Electronic Intifada it was decided that non-students will not be able to engage in the “open floor” presentations.
By only allowing five representatives each from UT-SJP and Hillel to speak at the closed hearing, Ide said that the administration has implied that divestment is a religious conflict instead of a human rights issue. “They present[ed] an image of two equal and opposing viewpoints,” Ide said, ignoring SJP’s alliance with a diverse array of students and campus groups.
In a letter sent Monday to UT-SJP, Hillel and members of the Jewish Federation, seen by The Electronic Intifada, student body president Clayton Notestine states that the student government and the administration decided to limit the meeting to avoid “increasing the chances for violent protest, talking over speakers, and putting stress on an already contentious issue.”
This morning, UT-SJP posted on Facebook: “Today is the day for social justice to flourish at our university. Despite the obstacles set in our way by administration, by student government, and by outside interference, we still feel confident that our divestment resolution will win a majority of votes in Student Government. In order to help ensure this happens, we need you to be present TONIGHT!”
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/ohio-university-imposes-secrecy-divestment-resolution
Closed-door debate on divestment by U of Toledo student gov’t to include officials from Jewish Federation
Activism Philip Weiss on February 17, 2015 69 Comments
This is one of the craziest stories we’ve ever reported. The student government at the University of Toledo is so frightened by a debate over divestment from Israel that it is rigging the debate on the topic tonight. It will hold the debate behind closed doors and limit how many students can come to the meeting. Only five representatives from two campus organizations. And each organization has to leave the room when the other side is making its case.
Though guess what-- two officials of the Jewish Federations of Greater Toledo are invited to the debate!
“Lewis Carroll couldn’t have done any better,” says Barbara Harvey of the National Lawyers Guild. “What seems to have precipitated this Alice in Wonderland version of democracy in action was the outreach from Students for Justice in Palestine to surrounding SJP chapters, urging them and other supporters to attend the hearing.”
Let’s walk through this.
The SJP chapter at the university started up in 2011 and has been working on a divestment resolution since then. The student government advisory measure would urge the university foundation “to divest from mutual funds that invest in companies ‘which are explicitly tied to Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories,’” as the Toledo Blade reports.
Last week the Toledo SJP urged students to attend tonight’s meeting:
This is a historic moment for us and our university. UT was nearly a decade late divesting from South African apartheid (we did not divest fully until 1989, while some other universities divested over ten years earlier), let’s not make the same mistake again. We are on the forefront of the struggle against injustice, and this is something all UT students should be proud of, especially us SJP activists who have worked so hard for this over the years.
Not so fast.
From the time that the divestment resolution came up on campus a couple of weeks ago, the local Jewish Federations of Greater Toledo (JFT), a pro-Israel organization, has been organizing against it. Fair enough. But JFT is so enmeshed in the matter that University of Toledo student government president Clayton Notestine has even included Jewish Federation officials on his emails to student groups about the resolution (I’ve seen such an email).
And the matter has also come to the attention of the school administration. Kaye Patten Wallace, the vice president of student affairs at the school, is said to have had meetings with student government leaders saying that the school was not happy about the resolution, it wasn’t a good time for the University of Toledo to be debating such a resolution.
And guess what? On Sunday night, student government president Notestine sent out an email announcing that tonight’s meeting on divestment would be closed to all but five representatives of the designated pro and con positions, and they could only speak for ten minutes per side. The two organizations invited are the SJP and the school’s Hillel chapter. A Hillel serves all Jewish students. So the Student Government is setting the debate up as a putatively religious question. Some of Notestine’s rules of order:
Here is how the meeting will be structured:
1. Your organization is permitted 5 representatives (Please have a list of the 5 emailed to me before Tuesday at 5:00 p.m.)
2. Coin flip will decide who has the floor first. The other organization will be asked to sit outside during the opposition’s report
2.1 We do this to prevent debate between our guests which is normally reserved for our voting senators
3. Your organization will be allowed to make official statements up to 10 minutes. (You may divide it up among speakers)
4. Everyone will be invited back into the room to watch the remainder of the session including senate debate and voting.
What’s more, Hillel will be allowed to include two officials of the Jewish Federation of Greater Toledo among its five representatives– though the JFT officials cannot speak to the resolution.
Derek Ide of the SJP steering committee says that the student government bowed to outside pressure in setting up the rules. “We are fully 100 percent opposed to this model of debate. We think it should be open to the public. From the beginning we have called for a fully democratic procedure,” he says.
The SJP is only going along with the charade, he says, because it is the “only avenue” offered to the organization to put forward its divestment resolution. He says that he has been told that the meeting will be live-streamed. So at least the campus can see what’s going on.
Update: As commenter Joel points out below, the Jewish Federations officials won’t be allowed to speak at the meeting. But they will be allowed to attend a meeting that almost all students are barred from.
The divestment resolution, by the way, targets five corporations that are complicit in violations of human rights and international law in the occupied territories. You’d think that anyone who’s for the two state solution would be all for this measure, as a way of ending the occupation. No.
Notestine says he came up with the rules on his own. “No one in the administration told anyone how to conduct the meeting,” he told me this morning. He told the Toledo Blade that he wants the meeting to be “conducted safely.”
The school surely worries that the debate over Israel and Palestine will be heated, engaged, loud, and divisive, as it has been at so many schools, from Berkeley to the University of Michigan. The Hillel on campus is afraid of such a democratic debate. From the Toledo Blade:
A statement released by Hillel characterized the proposed action as an attempt to “isolate and delegitimize Israel.”
“We are concerned about the potential implication this will have in creating hostility against the small Jewish community at UT,” the statement read in part. “We wish that the students who created this resolution had recognized and taken advantage of the opportunity for our community to exchange ideas and engage in civil dialogue about an issue that many of us care about. It is disappointing that they instead chose to engage in tactics that divide the campus community and prevent us from moving forward in a positive way.”
That’s an emotional blackmail, not so different from Lawrence Summers of Harvard saying that divestment resolutions cause Jewish members of an academic community to “feel that they are being attacked.” So anti-Zionism is equated with anti-Semitism, when many Jews have long opposed the program of Jewish nationalism on other people’s lands. How long must these mental chains limit American freedom of speech?
http://mondoweiss.net/2015/02/divestment-officials-federation
SJP resolution ruled ‘unconstitutional’ by University of Toledo SG
Colleen Anderson, Associate News Editor
February 18, 2015
Filed under News, Top Stories
Disappointment, relief and shock were just some of the emotions evident throughout the room after the divestment campaign resolution was declared unconstitutional during a special closed-door Student Government meeting.
The resolution proposed a divestment, or a withdrawal of investments, by UT from any company who “provide direct support for and directly profit from Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.”
The five main companies named in the resolution were Cemex, General Electric, Hewett-Packard, Proctor and Gamble, and Rolls-Royce.
Their involvements were explained in an eight-page resolution written by members of UT’s Students for Justice in Palestine’s steering committee, and sponsored by SG senators Nadine Sarsour and Sam Aburaad.
SG steering voted to have a closed session during the portion of the meeting concerning the resolution, which vice president Ali Eltatawy said was mainly out of concerns for student safety.
In addition to the closed session, Eltatawy said there would be up to ten officers present. At least eight officers were visibly present for the meeting, divided between the main room and the two rooms set aside for other students and community members to view the session via livestream.
“We do want to ensure above all else the safety of University of Toledo students but also, in the same time, to the best of our ability, uphold the democracy and transparency which we are based off of,” Eltatawy said.
During the meeting itself, both those in support of and those against the resolution were given ten minutes to speak during open floor.
Jessica Moses, a senior majoring in exercise science and Jewish student who opposed the resolution, centered her presentation around being “Pro Israel, Pro Palestinian, and Pro Peace.” She focused on her concerns for both the safety of Jewish students and a desire for open dialogue.
“As we have seen on other campuses, once resolutions like this are passed, or even just introduced, we see a rise in intimidation towards Jews,” Moses said. “Today is my opportunity to show everyone what I believe and what I stand for, which is peace, an open dialogue, and an understanding between the different students on campus.
Supporters of the proposed resolution heatedly discuss the Student Judicial Council's narrow 5-4 decision to declare it unconstitutional.
Shahrazad Hamdah, a steering member of SJP, spoke in support of the resolution, focused on both a previous divestment campaign by UT from South Africa in response to apartheid, and Israel’s current treatment of Palestinians.
“The Palestinian people are subjected to a system of ethnic segregation, discrimination, violence, and military occupation by the state of Israel, and in seeking divestment from these corporations, UT Divest joins a movement of students across the United States who refuse to accept their tuition dollars funding oppression,” Hamdah said.
Several schools, including DePaul University, San Diego State University, University of California at Davis, and Ohio State University have experienced divestment campaigns on their campuses, according to electronicintifada.net.
The decision was not ultimately voted on by the senators; the Student Judicial Council ruled the resolution unconstitutional by a vote of 5 to 4 after hearing debate. Justice David Manor gave the affirming opinion, and resigned shortly thereafter for reasons unspecified.
Justice Christopher Miller, who voted in favor of declaring the resolution unconstitutional, said he felt the resolution violated the section of the SG constitution dedicated to protecting against discrimination.
“We felt that because there was an opposing viewpoint on this proposal, that it [the resolution] wouldn’t necessarily protect against discrimination within the student body,” Miller said. “We felt that they [the opposing viewpoint] definitely expressed their opinions early on that they felt it would lead to their discrimination.”
Chief Justice Sebastian Wright gave the dissenting opinion of those who had voted the resolution was constitutional, and said he felt the senators should have been allowed to vote.
“I believe that this resolution should have been brought up to the floor, so that the senators, the representatives of the students, should have been able to vote on it,” Wright said. “We should be able to listen to everything the student body throws at us. We shouldn’t table it indefinitely because we’re scared, because the controversy, for some reason, seems to be against what we really want.”
Derek Ide, member of the SJP steering committee, said he was disappointed by the decision, and went on to say that SG members had privately told SJP of administration’s involvement in the proceedings.
““This is a fundamental travesty and injustice, and we reject this decision completely. It’s a mockery of democracy,” Ide said. “This has been a complete facade, a charade, and this is a reflection and manifestation of administrative pressure, undoubtedly. They’ve had their hands in this thing from the beginning, and we have heard this from multiple student government sources.”
Kaye Patten Wallace, senior vice president for student affairs, said the administration was not involved in the reaching of the decision in any way.
“This was a Student Government meeting. Our role as administrators is not to impact the meeting in any sort of way.” said Patten Wallace. “We have absolutely no input in terms of how Student Government runs their meetings or the decisions they make.”
Several members of SJP and senators alike, including Sarsour and Aburaad and SJP steering committee member Eman Alhana expressed disappointment with the ruling.
However, several SG senators, including Joel Robbins and Senator Ronald Phiels, said they agreed with SJC’s decision.
“I guess the only thing I have to say to SJC is thank you,” Phiels said. “I understand that you guys [SJP] still want to have your resolution put forward, but at the end of the day, democracy, you know, prevailed, and that’s the way it is done in the real world.”
SG President Clayton Notestine said he would have liked to have provided more structure to the actual debate and arranged for more time for speakers on both sides, as well as having more discussion with SJC about the possibility of the resolution being ruled unconstitutional.
“I knew that option was always out there, but being a senior member of Student Government, I was under the impression it would not be deemed unconstitutional,” Notestine said. “I was very surprised.”
http://independentcollegian.com/2015/02/18/news/sjp-resolution-unconstitutional/
UT student senate tosses divestment proposal
9-member council voted 5-4 late Tuesday that resolution was unconstitutional
BY LAUREN LINDSTROM
BLADE STAFF WRITER
Editor’s Note: This updated article includes action that occurred after the newspaper deadline Tuesday night.
After nearly two hours of presentations and debate, members of University of Toledo's student senate threw out a resolution calling for the university's divestment from companies connected to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
The nine-member student judicial council, the judicial branch of student government, voted 5-4 late Tuesday that the resolution was unconstitutional. Student government President Clayton Notestine, who is not a member of the council, said the justices felt the resolution's wording was discriminating toward a particular group of students on campus, the university's Jewish population.
The resolution cannot be brought before senate again unless it is "drastically different," Mr. Notestine said. It can still be debated in a public forum through a university referendum, which would put a vote to the entire student body.
Representatives from Students for Justice in Palestine in support of the resolution and Toledo Hillel in opposition to it each were allowed five representatives and 10 minutes to speak.
Shahrazad Hamdah, of SJP, urged the student government to consider the matter as a human rights issue and ignore arguments that the measure was religiously based.
"This is not a religious issue," she said. “The representation of UT Divest as being of a religious nature is a gravely inaccurate mistake, but it is a blatant attempt to shift the conversation away the original purpose, which is to address divestment from companies complicit, proven to be complicit in human rights violations."
Jessica Moses, of Hillel, warned the measure would provoke anti-Semitism on UT’s campus.
"I speak as a proud UT, pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian, pro-peace student activist. As a Jew, I have no problem walking around campus comfortable who I am. As we've seen on other campuses, when resolutions like this are passed or even introduced, we see a rise in intimidation toward Jews," she said. "We strongly urge you to spend time researching and better understanding the conflict. Until you truly understand and feel informed enough to take a position on this, you should vote no."
The resolution was sponsored by Nadine Sarsour and Saleh Aburaad, who are also members of SJP. The resolution called for the university to divest from companies that "provide direct support for and directly profit from Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian territories and violations of international human rights law." The resolution named Cemex, General Electric Hewlett-Packard, Procter & Gamble, and Rolls-Royce, which are included in the University’s 16 investment portfolios.
Members of the student body not speaking were relegated to two overflow rooms elsewhere in the student union, where a live stream of the meeting was projected on large screens. The meeting was also available for live streaming on UT's YouTube page. The rooms were designated for supporters of SJP and Hillel, with no visible overlap between the two rooms. About 200 students and members of the community watched in the overflow rooms.
As early as 7 p.m., SJP members gathered outside the room where the senate meets, wearing blue and yellow T-shirts with the phrase “#UTDivest,” the social media hashtag adopted by supporters. Shortly after, Supporters of Hillel, arrived with small Israeli flags and yellow T-shirts that read “Say Yes to Peace, Say No to Divestment.”
Sara Federman, a graduate student at UT and member of Hillel, said the group was concerned about the manner in which the resolution was presented.
“We support a more educated, open, and peaceful discussion, and this resolution is not going to allow that to happen, it’s going to create more divisions on campus,” she said. “Student government is not the place where we should be arguing about this debate.”
Before the meeting Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Notestine said he had "full faith" that students would be able to engage in substantive dialogue. He said the decision to create the overflow rooms was because of space issues.
“This is first time we are aware, no one has been able to show precedence, where there has been a student government meeting that has been closed,” said Derek Ide, a member of the SJP steering committee. “We have rejected that from the very beginning, and we fought it tooth and nail. We at SJP believe in an open, transparent, democratic debate.”
Regardless of the outcome, Mr. Ide said SJP had decided the next step would be to propose a referendum to the student body on the issue of divestment.
http://www.toledoblade.com/Education/2015/02/18/Student-senate-tables-idea-of-UT-divestment.html
Students allege “travesty of justice” as Ohio university muzzles debate on Israel divestment
Submitted by Nora Barrows-Friedman on Thu, 02/19/2015 - 19:24
After several hours of debate on Tuesday night, the student government at the University of Toledo in Ohio shut down a hearing on a resolution to divest from firms abetting Israel’s crimes.
Just before the vote was to take place by the student senate, the university’s Student Judicial Council, part of the student government, announced that it had ruled a resolution calling for divestment “unconstitutional” on the grounds that it was “discriminatory” and “one-sided.” The ruling allowed no recourse or debate and the entire vote was then scrapped.
As The Electronic Intifada reported, the university administration had insisted that discussions relating to the resolution be conducted in a secretive manner.
Tuesday’s meeting was live-streamed on YouTube — but the recording was made private immediately afterwards. Palestine solidarity activists say this was a deliberate attempt by the administration to prevent public review of what the activists called the “disgraceful proceedings.”
“The #UTDivest movement resolutely condemns the cruel parliamentarian absurdities that we were forced to endure last night,” student campaigners wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday morning.
The administration had ruled that supporters of the resolution could only have ten minutes to present their arguments without the opposing group present in the room, and vice versa.
Following presentations given by both supporters and opponents of the divestment resolution, student senators were allowed approximately half an hour of debate.
Several of the senators made remarks insinuating that divestment supporters were anti-Semitic and that the bill could discriminate against Jewish students, parroting talking points by Israel advocacy groups.
Hillel, a nationwide network of campus centers for Jewish students which opposes boycott and sanctions efforts, brought in the Jewish Federation of Toledo to help crush support for the resolution. The group is affiliated with a national network called the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA).
In 2010, JFNA and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs launched the “Israel Action Network,” described as “a multimillion-dollar joint initiative to combat anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns” and to fight “the delegitimizing of the State of Israel.”
“Travesty of justice”
Derek Ide, co-founder of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at the University of Toledo (UT-SJP), told The Electronic Intifada on Wednesday morning that he was frustrated by the outcome of the hearing but students haven’t lost their determination to see this resolution become a reality.
“Our reaction was complete disbelief at the travesty of justice and the mockery of democracy that took place [Tuesday] night,” Ide said. “The talking points put forward by Hillel as well as some of the senators associated with them was manifestation of outside influence.”
Ide said that UT-SJP’s plan is to bring a divestment resolution back to the student senate immediately.
“It’s apparent that from the beginning, this process has been non-transparent and undemocratic. But we’re on the side not only of justice for the Palestinians and for people around the world, but also for open, democratic debate on UT’s campus which is a very important principle for us. We’re ready to move forward,” Ide said.
UT-SJP is planning to call a referendum through which the entire student body on campus will be allowed to vote on the divestment resolution.
Meanwhile, the undergraduate student government at Stanford University in California passed a divestment resolution in a landslide vote on Tuesday evening. A divestment resolution also passed at Northwestern University in Illinois early Thursday morning.
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/students-allege-travesty-justice-ohio-university-muzzles-debate-israel
"Editorial: Close Vote Closes Debate"
Student Judicial Council votes 5-to-4 to rule resolution unconstitutional
If you’ve been keeping up with Student Government news, you know that last week’s closed meeting was extremely controversial.
After the heated debate about the proposed resolution, the Student Judicial Council surprised us all last week by stopping the resolution before it hit the floor for voting.
The purpose of Student Government, at least according to their constitution, is to “represent the student body with authority derived from the students and recognized by the university.”
SG has set goals for itself, which include defending the student body and protecting them from discrimination. Any resolutions that violate these provisions can and will be ruled unconstitutional by the SJC, a power that must be used carefully.
A resolution sponsored last week by Students for Justice in Palestine called for UT “to divest from socially irresponsible companies that violate Palestinian human and legal rights.” The SJC ruled this resolution unconstitutional on the grounds that it does not protect against discrimination, according to Justice David Manor.
We are disappointed that Student Government did not ultimately vote on the resolution. Regardless of the decision, we think this was an opportunity for senators to rise to the occasion and represent the students, whether that meant voting for or against the resolution.
In a five-to-four vote, the council prevented this resolution from even making it to the floor. Clearly the opinions were split down the middle, and the opinion on deciding to rule the resolution unconstitutional seemed as divided as the senate itself.
Justification for this ruling came from the notion that if UT were to divest from companies that did business with Israel, then Jewish students on campus could experience an increase in discrimination.
Those on SJC who disagreed with this cited the constitution’s articles about accurately representing students and working towards a more perfect university as the reasoning to allow the senate to vote.
The authors of the resolution claimed the legislation was only about the moral and ethical ramifications of investing in companies that do business in Israel. Their goal was not discrimination against Jews on campus. The authors and supporters of the resolution advocated for peace, not for the creation of more tension and unkind feelings.
However, members of Hillel spoke about their fear of discrimination on campus, even if it was not explicitly stated by the resolution. SJC was divided on whether this argument was a valid one, but in the end, the majority decided the danger of discrimination was too great to ignore.
Let’s take a step back and look at the big picture. Here’s what we believe the problem is — if SJC had such a close vote, why not let senate vote on it? Since there are clearly strong opinions on both sides, letting the larger body of the senate vote might have brought more perspective to the issue than the nine members of SJC.
If the senate also found that passing the resolution would lead to discrimination, then they could have voted it down or proposed an amendment to the resolution that could have helped protect Jewish students from discrimination.
Generally, the idea is the more minds working together on a problem, the better. We will never know if the senate’s vote would have ultimately been a benefit or a detriment to the students. However, what we can do is look back on the issues this resolution raised and continue debating them as a university.
If we continue to promote peaceful dialogue and discussion, then regardless of the outcome, we have found a way to grow, both within our Student Government and in our UT community.
http://independentcollegian.com/2015/02/25/opinion/editorials/editorial-close-vote-closes-debate/
UT:10 News - UT Divest
Tatiana Cunningham looks into a student organization working to stop UT from investing with companies that they say violate Palestinian human and legal rights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dI-VxErP9Ow&feature=youtu.be
Divestment passes
Resoluion gains majority vote, campaign continues
Abigail Sullivan
Shahrizad Hamdah, SJP steering committee member, raises her hand for a chance to speak during open floor. The weekly SG meeting was moved to the Student Union Auditorium and lasted about three hours. During that time, both senators and committee members were given the chance to speak on the divestment resolution.
Shouts of joy and excitement erupted from the supporters of the divestment resolution as it passed in an overwhelming majority vote of 21-4 during the weekly University of Toledo Student Government meeting.
At the start of the meeting, 94 attendees were present, not including the 27 senators and 7 SJC members in attendance. Five uniformed officers were also present throughout the room.
The senate heard speakers from numerous organizations. Representatives from Students for Justice in Palestine, UT Hillel, Community Solidarity Response Network, Christians United for Israel, and Jewish Voices for Peace, among several others, gave their opinions on the renewed divestment resolution being proposed at the meeting.
The speakers talked from a few seconds to several minutes over almost two hours. Two speakers, Rob Vincent and Sam Aburaad, were asked to sit down after overstepping the boundaries of open floor.
SG President Clayton Notestine encouraged senators to vote yes or no rather than abstaining.
“Vote yes or vote no. You can choose which one you believe in, but stand by your choice. You can choose to go and abstain and not vote at all, but I am imploring that you go ahead and make a decision to stand up for what you believe in, and vote yes or vote no,” Notestine said.
Those in support of the resolution spoke on the human rights violations against Palestinians by Israel, and were supported by members of numerous outside student organizations and religious institutions. Anecdotes, personal testimonies and statistics were all used as support for the resolution.
Robbie Abdelhoq, SJP steering committee member, spoke about his time spent in Gaza, focusing on an encounter with some of the boys from the host family he was living with.
“The young men had become accustomed to frequent raids and random house searches in the middle of the night by the Israeli occupation forces,” Abdelhoq said. “They had become so frustrated with spending night after night — sometimes in the winter, sometimes not — in the middle of the street in their pajamas that they began to remain dressed all day and throughout the night.”
Derek Ide, SJP steering committee member, said Israel is not being singled out by the resolution.
“It is not us [SJP] who singles out Israel. It is Hillel and AIPAC and every other defender of Israeli crimes who wants Israel to maintain a special status, a status that places them above international law and unaccountable to the
“
It is not us [SJP] who singles out Israel. It is Hillel and AIPAC and every other defender of Israeli crimes who wants Israel to maintain a special status, a status that places them above international law and unaccountable to the norms and standards of justice.”
— Derek Ide, SJP steering committee member
norms and standards of justice.”
Ide also criticized the statements by the opposition that they were pro-Palestinian.
“To ignore Palestinian voices and to claim that you are pro-Palestinian is not only arrogant and patronizing, but is a pernicious lie,” Ide said.
Shahrazad Hamdah, SJP steering committee member, also expressed her disapproval for the opposition’s pro-peace statement.
“Peace is not the perpetuation of the status quo for your own benefit,” Hamdah said.
Joel Reinstein, a representative of Jewish Voices for Peace, said he does not agree with the claim that the divestment resolution will encourage discrimination against Jewish students, or that the resolution singles out Israel.
“To say that their struggle for survival is about ‘singling out the Jewish state’ is to ignore their 70 years of unspeakable suffering at the hands of a single state: Israel,” Reinstein said. “Demanding that Palestinians address all oppression in the world before fighting their own is just another way of telling them to shut up and accept being erased.”
The opposition for the resolution reiterated their original fears of discrimination against Jewish students on campus. Several students focused on a desire for peace and dialogue, saying a reversal of the decision would be a mistake by SG.
“I’m not afraid of disagreements, but this resolution does not leave any room for the civil dialogue that we so desire and encourage on and off campus,” said Jacob Ritchart, a freshman at UT.
Ritchart also said Israeli citizens have also been attacked, and talked about a specific instance in which rockets were fired at Israel from Gaza.
Jessica Moses, president of UT Hillel, said she fears the resolution will encourage discrimination against Jewish students on campus and limit dialogue.
“I believe that the honest discussion should be taking place, but by voting yes on this resolution today, you are taking this option off the table,” Moses said.
According to Moses, the reversal of SJC’s decision on the resolution’s constitutionality “undermines the function of Student Government.”
Kelly Market, president of Christians United for Israel, agreed and said “a change in the outcome of the vote tonight from anything other than a decision consistent with last week’s decision would make a mockery out of Student Government by proving that our senators can be intimated into changing their vote.”
Sara Federman, a member of Hillel, said voting for divestment would mean supporting Israel’s destruction.
“The boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement that this resolution is a part of seeks the destruction of the state of Israel, and the homeland of the Jews. If the senate chooses to pass this resolution, the University of Toledo becomes part of the international effort to see the elimination of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state,” Federman said.
A motion to vote on the resolution by secret ballot failed. Notestine said voting by secret ballot is in violation of Ohio’s Open Meetings Act, an issue that members of SJP brought to his attention. Shortly afterwards the senators voted by standing up at their place in favor of yes or no, and the resolution was passed.
“I feel it was unfair, just the advantages they [SJP] may have been given today,” Moses said. She went on to say Hillel has no current plans considering the divestment resolution, but they may campaign if a referendum on the issue is proposed.
“Yes, this is definitely a little bit of a loss, but we wake up tomorrow, we are going to be the same organization that we were. We don’t have one sole purpose like SJP does,” Federman said. “We are a safe place for Jewish students on campus, and we will continue to do so by giving many more events than just debates in Student Government.”
SJP wants the debate on the issue to be an “open, democratic, transparent process,” according to Ide, who said the next step in the divestment campaign is a referendum. “We believe the entire student body should vote on it regardless, but we wanted to have this battle first in Student Government.”
http://independentcollegian.com/2015/03/04/news/divestment-passes/
Ohio students approve Israel divestment vote by landslide
Submitted by Nora Barrows-Friedman on Wed, 03/04/2015 - 21:33
On Tuesday night, the student government at the University of Toledo inOhio approved a resolution to divest from companies which profit from Israeli violations of Palestinians’ rights. The resolution passed with 21 student senators in favor and only four against.
This comes just two weeks after a divestment resolution hearing was muzzled and ruled “unconstitutional” by the student government’s judicial council at the university. On Tuesday night, the judicial council reconsidered its original decision and found that the divestment resolution was indeed constitutional.
“The differences were stark between what happened this week and what happened [on 19 February],” said Derek Ide, co-founder of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at the University of Toledo (UT-SJP), in an interview with The Electronic Intifada on Wednesday morning.
Ide said that students led a strong campaign over the last two weeks to demand transparency and democratic process from the student government and the university administration.
“Beautiful coalition”
Before the initial hearing on 19 February, the university administration had insisted that discussions on the resolution be conducted in a secretive manner. During that meeting, students supporting and opposing the resolution were prevented from hearing each others’ viewpoints.
These processes were heavily criticized by students, activists and legal advocates with the Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Solidarity Legal Support as violations of open democratic process and students’ first amendment rights.
A petition supporting students’ right to hold a divestment hearing was circulated via the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and garnered more than 5,400 signatures.
During Tuesday’s hearing, students from a diverse array of groups and communities on campus were allowed to deliver personal testimonies in favor of divestment.
“It was a very liberating experience,” Ide said. “The UT Divest team had a beautiful coalition of human beings who put together articulate, very powerful arguments that swept the opposition away.”
Hillel, a nationwide network of campus centers for Jewish students which opposes boycott and sanctions efforts against Israel, brought in the Jewish Federation of Toledoto help crush support for the resolution. The group is affiliated with a national network called the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA).
In 2010, JFNA and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs launched the “Israel Action Network,” described as “a multimillion-dollar joint initiative to combat anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns” and to fight “the delegitimizing of the State of Israel.”
Students affiliated with Hillel repeated “the same canned speeches from two weeks ago,” Ide explained. Those speeches, he said, included claims that passing a divestment resolution would “increase anti-Semitism.”
“But none of the senators bought it,” Ide added. Listen to the interview with him via the media player above.
“Verbal thuggery”
During the initial hearing on 19 February, several student senators repeated claims touted by Israel-aligned organizations that the divestment resolution could inspire “discrimination” toward Jewish students on campus.
Opponents of the resolution this Tuesday night asserted that the resolution unfairly “singled out” Israel, another allegation repeated by Israel-aligned organizations which is designed to defeat student divestment campaigns.
Speaking to the campus newspaper, the Independent Collegian, Ide said that “It is not us [SJP] who singles out Israel. It is Hillel and AIPAC and every other defender of Israeli crimes who wants Israel to maintain a special status, a status that places them above international law and unaccountable to the norms and standards of justice.”
Barbara Harvey, a Detroit-based attorney active in the National Lawyers Guild and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace told The Electronic Intifada by email that “the rehearing of SJP’s divestment resolution was an object lesson in the power of free speech and fair play, when justice and humanity are on your side.”
Harvey said that students speaking in support of the resolution “told of moving personal experiences, ranging from direct contact with the occupation, close up, to discrimination in the modern US, explaining their own commitments to justice for Palestinians. The opposition’s responses by Hillel and the local Jewish Federation rested on a foundation of guilt-tripping accusations of discrimination and sometimes wildly inaccurate factual assertions, fairly characterized as verbal thuggery.”
“The ball is now squarely in the university’s court,” Harvey noted. “Will the trustees show the same courage as SJP and the student government in considering whether to implement the resolution?”
“Collapsed” to pressure
Ide told The Electronic Intifada that although the administration has not reached out to SJP about the ways in which democratic process was subverted two weeks ago, the student government leaders “tried their best to rectify what happened [when they] completely collapsed [to pressure from the administration].”
He added that the student government leaders “did as much as they could last night to make the debate last night as open and transparent and as democratic as possible, given the structural constraints of student government.”
The University of Toledo’s divestment victory has become the third resolution passed by student governments in just the last two weeks, alongside Northwestern University andStanford University.
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/ohio-students-approve-israel-divestment-vote-landslide
UT does not back resolution calling for divestment from firms tied to Israeli occupationWednesday, 3/4/2015
University of Toledo leaders do not support a student senate-backed resolution calling for UT to divest from companies connected to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
Interim President Nagi Naganathan and UT Foundation President Brenda Lee issued a joint, written statement today expressing disagreement with the divestment action called for in a resolution approved by the student senate in a 21 to 4 vote Tuesday.
“Just like at many universities and colleges across the nation where during the last 15 years this debate has taken place, the University of Toledo and the UT Foundation do not support the divestment called for in the Student Senate resolution,” they stated.
A previous draft of the resolution was thrown out two weeks ago after the student judicial council determined it did not meet the student government’s constitution.
The divestment issue returned to the student senate in a modified format, said student body president Clayton Notestine.
Mr. Notestine said the student senate meeting “went very well for how contentious the issue was.”
The approved resolution is supported by University of Toledo Students for Justice in Palestine and calls for the University of Toledo Foundation to divest “from companies directly supporting or profiting from Israel’s nearly half-century long military occupation of Palestinian lands to which it has no lawful claim or entitlement.”
The resolution notes that it “does not call for discrimination against anyone.”
Mr. Naganathan and Ms. Lee described the debate over the issue as “commendable.”
“Free speech and open conversations delving into complex issues are at the very core of our educational mission, and we are pleased with the civil and respectful nature of the dialogue Tuesday evening,” they said.
Read more at http://www.toledoblade.com/Education/2015/03/04/University-of-Toledo-does-not-back-resolution-calling-for-divestment-from-firms-tied-to-Israeli-occupation.html#c2i2eKqPULmviIqd.99
http://www.toledoblade.com/Education/2015/03/04/University-of-Toledo-does-not-back-resolution-calling-for-divestment-from-firms-tied-to-Israeli-occupation.html#c2i2eKqPULmviIqd.99
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