STORRS, Conn. — Pro-Palestinian protestors and officials from the University of Connecticut scheduled a meeting for Monday afternoon, but it quickly came to naught as two groups appeared to have different agendas.
University officials said they had scheduled the meeting as a "care and concern" check-in, while the student group claimed there were "failed negotiations."
UConn spokesperson Stephanie Reitz said that university staff had met with a "small group of representatives" from the UConn Divest coalition that launched the campus encampment. She said that the purpose of the meeting was to see "how they were doing" and ensure that they understood the university's policies and practices after initial communication on Friday.
In a release from UConn Divest, the coalition said their negotiators met with the university administrators at 3 p.m. to talk about the encampment at Dove Tower and discuss their demands.
While they claimed that the university was "not interested in negotiations," Reitz said that the coalition was told in advance that the meeting was not "to negotiate anything" and was instead a check-in out of "care and concern."
After noting the negotiation team walked out of the meeting, UConn Divest added that they told the university that "any harm that happens to anyone within, but not limited to, the encampment will fall squarely on the shoulders of the administration."
The ongoing Gaza Solidarity Encampment at UConn was launched on April 25 with up to 300 students to protest the university's "complicity in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and its shameful contributions to militarism around the world," the group previously said in a release.
The group is calling for the UConn Foundation to disclose and divest any ties to military manufacturers and the Israel-Hamas war, as well as amnesty for students and staff involved in the protest and for investigations into hate incidents on campus in the last year that they say targeted Arab students and people of color.
Muhammad Elsabbal, a UConn Divest student organizer said Saturday, "The overwhelming majority of the Middle East student exchange programs that we have here are in Israel, there's only one to my knowledge that is outside of Israel that's in the Middle East. And obviously, the Middle East is bigger than just Israel."
Jewish students had said that they were disturbed by the recent protests.
"It's disturbing that they're doing it on my campus where I'm trying to focus on college education and be convincing thousands of my fellow students that what they're doing is right and correct," Ari Gerard, a student from UConn Hillel said. "But it's really just not right."
Gerard added that "the idea for UConn or America would divest from the military-industrial complex is quite frankly delusional" and that "they're funding what they're protesting at this very moment."
Reitz said on Thursday, the first day of the protest, that graduate student Alexander Kueny, 34, from Storrs, was charged with one count of interfering with an officer.
The university said Friday that police would be checking the IDs of students participating in the demonstration and that a call for round-the-clock quiet was issued campus-wide as students prepare for finals and graduation just around the corner.
UConn and Yale are just two of the more than 40 colleges and universities nationwide where students are calling on educational institutions to divest from military weapon manufacturers supplying the Israel-Hamas war.
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