STORRS, Conn. — Up to 300 UConn students launched a Gaza Solidarity Encampment Thursday evening to protest UConn’s “complicity in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and its shameful contributions to militarism around the world,” according to a release from the UConn Divest coalition.
The students are also advocating for a liberated Palestine. The UConn Divest coalition launched the encampment, bringing together student organizations and individuals who are committed to fighting for a free Palestine and to ending the university’s support for occupation and genocide, the coalition said.
“While this encampment is unprecedented at UConn, our goal today is not solely to ‘make history’ but to end UConn’s complicity in the genocide of our siblings in Gaza. We center Gaza in our hearts and mind,” encampment organizers declared to supporters on Thursday.
Video released by the coalition has shown students attempting to set up tents near the center of campus, as police make their presence felt. One video appears to show a student being arrested.
UConn spokesperson Stephanie Reitz confirmed one person was arrested for allegedly attempting to push a police officer who was trying to detain another individual. The man who was arrested is Alexander Kueny, 34, a UConn graduate student from Storrs, who was charged with one count of interfering with an officer. He was released on a $500 non-surety bond, and is scheduled to appear in Rockville Superior Court on May 7, Reitz said.
The coalition has directed several demands toward the UConn administration and UConn Foundation.
These include disclosure and divestment from occupation and genocide. The students want the university to disclose institutional expenditures, including direct and indirect investments of the school's endowment, stocks, bonds, and hedge funds. The students are also calling for divesting the endowment from defense contractors RTX, Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics, and companies based in Israel.
Additionally, the students demand that UConn ban military companies from recruiting on campus, and reject charitable donations, research and scholarship grants, and contracts with weapons manufacturers and military contractors.
The protestors are also calling for the university to rename facilities dedicated to military contractors and abolish days of recognition and recruitment for military contractors, as well as remove Alumni Trustee Bryan Pollard, associate general counsel for RTX, from the Board of Trustees “for gross conflicts of interest.”
Student protestors are demanding that UConn sever ties to the “settler-colonial state of Israel” by refusing new contracts and research grants from all companies and entries which “actively participate in the colonization and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.”
The coalition named the Israel Occupation Forces, the Israeli government, state agencies, and Israeli industries and agriculture as entities that UConn must separate itself from. The protestors are also requesting that the university end academic exchange programs with and study abroad trips to all universities, institutions, and programs in Israel.
Lastly, the coalition is demanding that UConn end repression of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian activists by ending the “intimidation of Palestinian and pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist activists through the selective weaponization of the Student Code of Conduct” and commit to upholding the rights of expression and protest.
The encampment has also posted several rules, noting it fights for Palestine, not clout, and that those involved can never talk to police officers.
Students involved are also prohibited from talking to the press without training and permission and cannot interact with, engage, or antagonize counter-protestors.
The encampment joins a national student movement and is one of more than 30 active encampments on university and college campuses throughout the United States, according to the coalition.
More updates pertaining to the encampment can be found at @uconndivest on Instagram.
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Dalton Zbierski is a digital content producer and writer at FOX61 News. He can be reached at dzbierski@FOX61.com.
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