A student group identifying themselves as Beyond Empire staged a 10-person sit-in in North College’s Investment Office on Friday, Sept. 20, calling for the Board of Trustees to vote yes on the Committee of Investor Responsibility’s (CIR) proposal regarding investments in companies supporting the internationally-sanctioned occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. The Board of Trustees vote on the CIR proposal was scheduled to be held that weekend, on Saturday, Sept. 21.

After refusing to leave the premises, five of the 10 student protestors were detained on the fourth floor of North College for one-and-a-half hours by the Middletown Police Department (MPD). Following the apprehension, students were escorted outside by the MPD and released, pending internal disciplinary charges.

“The University called for police assistance only because the students refused to comply with reasonable time and place restrictions on their protest,” an all-campus email sent by University Communications shortly after the sit-in read. “For Wesleyan, it has always been a last resort to ask the police to assist in maintaining the University’s ability to conduct normal operations.”

Beyond Empire initiated the sit-in in support of the divestment proposal outlined by the CIR, a non-fiduciary committee of the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA) revived in Spring 2024 in response to campus-wide interest in the University’s investments. The CIR received specific requests from Wesleyan Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Faculty Ad-Hoc Network for Justice Palestine (FJP) in May to investigate the University’s financial backing of companies supporting the internationally-sanctioned occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. 

“The Wesleyan Committee for Investor Responsibility (CIR) is a student, faculty, staff, and alumni panel that advises the University’s Board of Trustees on ethical matters related to the endowment,” the WSA states on its website. “It…seeks to represent and empower the Wesleyan community in advocating for greater transparency and shareholder engagement with respect to endowment assets.”

Over the summer, the CIR established a divestment subcommittee with the explicit task of developing a document outlining the ethical and financial implications of University investments in Israel and in companies associated with Israel’s internationally-sanctioned occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. On Friday, Aug. 30, the CIR issued the proposal and presented it to both the board of trustees and the Wesleyan Investment Committee. IT is titled “Proposal Concerning the Divestment of Wesleyan University’s Endowment from Companies Which Supply Services, Equipment, or Weapons Involved in Israel’s Illegal Occupation of Palestinian and Syrian Territory.”

In the early hours of Friday, Sept. 20, before the board of trustees convened to vote on the proposal, Beyond Empire uploaded an Instagram post encouraging followers to join the planned sit-in in dedication to Tala Abu Ajwa later that day. Ajwa was a 10-year-old Palestinian girl murdered in an Israeli airstrike on Wednesday, Sept. 4 in Gaza City, found wearing her pink roller skates.  

At noon on the day of the scheduled sit-in, Beyond Empire sent a letter to the Board of Trustees declaring that they were the autonomous group of ten students that had initiated the demonstration. They reiterated their demands: The board must vote yes on the CIR’s divestment proposal, a position which they affirmed had garnered support from students through petitions, committee participation, and personal pleas. 

“We urge you to vote in favor of the CIR’s divestment proposal, which would significantly reduce our complicity in these atrocities, align with Wesleyan’s so-called ethical responsibility strategy, and protect human and non-human life,” Beyond Empire’s open letter read. “Vote to divest.”

Ten students subsequently entered North College and dropped down a blue banner with red lettering outside the fourth floor window, with the words “Tala Abu Ajwa Hall.” Students then reached the area outside the Office of Investments, wearing facial coverings including keffiyehs and sunglasses, and repeating pro-Palestinian chants.

“The protestors were peacefully chanting outside the Investments Office for nearly half an hour before the police arrived,” an anonymous source working on the same floor as the Office of Investments at the time of the sit-in said. 

Public Safety (PSafe) arrived shortly after. According to an all-campus email sent by University Communications four hours after the protest began, PSafe and Wesleyan’s Student Affairs team asked the students to leave, and told them that they were violating the student code of conduct by disrupting University operations. Five of the students left voluntarily, but the remaining five refused to leave, after which the MPD was called on campus for intervention. 

“Middletown Police arrived and restated the warnings, offering to let the students leave rather than be arrested,” the email read. “For Wesleyan, it has always been a last resort to ask the police to assist in maintaining the University’s ability to conduct normal operations.”

A shared Instagram post between SJP, Beyond Empire, and external groups CT for Palestine and CT Dissenters, however, contends that moments after the banner for Tala Abu Ajwa was dropped from the fourth floor of North College, President Michael Roth ’78 and University administration called the MPD. As various SJP members have noted, this is in direct contradiction to Roth’s article in the New Republic, entitled “Why I’m Not Calling the Police on my Students’ Encampment.” 

“Roth continues to paint himself and Wesleyan as the defender of free speech and the right to protest—but students know the truth,” the post read. “He boasted about his refusal to call the police on the Wesleyan Palestine Solidarity Encampment last spring. What he was really celebrating was his reluctance to brutalize students, which should be the bare minimum.”

Once the MPD arrived, students were asked to hand over their WesIDs and identify themselves and were subsequently handcuffed and fielded to conference room 405 for questioning. According to the SJP post, the five students were denied access to the bathroom, frisked, and were immediately threatened with suspension. They were then given the option to be released without charge on the condition that they leave the building. 

A video circulating on SJP and Beyond Empire’s accounts on Instagram show a clip of the events inside the conference room—two students are seen with their hands held behind their backs by officers, and one student can be heard shouting that they were being handcuffed. One student in the video is grabbed by their shorts by an officer and touched repeatedly in the chest area, which the SJP statement characterized as groping, not standard police frisking. 

Two members of Beyond Empire, Rowan Roudebush ’27 and Reana Akhtar ’27, were among the five students who stayed in North College when instructed to exit the building. They also recall being handcuffed, questioned, and having their belongings taken, including the Tala Abu Ajwa Hall banner and Roudebush’s drum. 

“The police came upstairs and asked us to leave, we said we wouldn’t until [we saw] divestment from bombs being dropped on Palestinian families,” Roudebush said. “They put us in handcuffs and said they were going to arrest us…later they offered for us to not be arrested, and we decided it would be more useful for us to be available to mobilize for our objective.”

The detained students also claimed that the officers threatened to file a $50,000 bond should the protestors remain on the premises. 

Outside of North College, students and community members in support of the sit-in gathered by the North College steps to hear from other pro-Palestinian protestors, voicing support for their peers inside the building. Impromptu speeches about the CIR proposal and impending vote, a historical overview of the Wesleyan South African divestment movement, and the implications of institutional investment were held to a crowd of over fifty. 

“When students engage in peaceful protest here, they are arrested,” a student member of the CIR and speaker at the event said. “And Michael Roth can write an article and dance around on how peaceful and…[how we have] neutral spaces to talk about whatever the fuck is happening in the world. And then when students try to hold them to that, they are arrested.”

They also noted that the MPD has not been called by the University administration to intervene during any on-campus student protests for Palestine in the past year, distinguishing Wesleyan from similar institutions such as the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and Pomona College. 

“There’s no way they could have had any legal grounding for it,” Roudebush said. “There have been sit-ins at the University in the past and nothing has happened. Their response to us, the threats—they were all part of that facilitation for genocide.”

Once the five students were released, they joined their supporters in front of North College, and watched as numerous police cars cleared the area. The doors to North College, South College, and nearby administrative buildings were subsequently locked by PSafe officers. Though supporters included SJP members, Beyond Empire stated that they are not affiliated with SJP, even though both groups were in support of the sit-in.

“This was all Beyond Empire,” Akhtar said. “…[Part] of Beyond Empire helped facilitate what was happening outside of the building, making sure that a crowd would be there in terms of people’s support. But SJP supports all autonomous actions taken in the name of freeing Palestine and they amplified our actions that day.” 

Those affiliated with Beyond Empire expressed pride in their actions that day, and vowed to continue protesting until University divestment is fully achieved.

“I don’t think what students did today was inappropriate,” Akhtar said. “I think this is well within what folks need to do to change the conversation and to hold people accountable, because we do not want our tuition dollars to be funding what’s happening in Gaza.”

The now-released students will be appearing before the Community Standards Board on Thursday, Sept. 26, awaiting disciplinary action in response to the sit-in. 

 

Carolyn Neugarten can be reached at cneugarten@wesleyan.edu.

Janhavi Munde can be reached at jmunde@wesleyan.edu.