Overview:
- Sunrise supports the Palestinian state and the following Nashville organizations:
- Palestine Hurra Collective
- Tennesseans for Palestines
- Middle Tennessee Christians for Justice in Palestine
- Vanderbilt Divest Coalition
- Jewish Voice for Peace
- Students for Justice in Palestine
- Vanderbilt arrested four students, and more than a dozen were suspended for protesting.
- Nashville Scene reporter Eli Motycka was also arrested.
Demands:
- Drop charges for all student protesters.
- Vanderbilt needs to divest from all organizations funding the genocide in Gaza.
Timeline:
- Several student groups collaborated in February to pass a resolution through student government under the name Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS for short).
- February: Vanderbilt’s student groups passed out flyers with a call to action for students. The call was to sign a petition supporting a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions resolution.
- 2019: Daniel Diermeier became Vanderbilt’s Chancellor and soon after the “Commitment to Free Expression” was implemented with new protest rules.
- 2021-2022: “Vanderbilt expanded the handbook’s 186-word “Demonstrations and Dissent” paragraph into a 1,400-word section titled “Demonstrations, Dissents, and Protests” setting out rules around protest definitions, planning, and implementation.”
- Feb 23: Vanderbilt’s resolution received over 600 signatures. This more than surpassed the required signatures to BLANK.
- Feb 24: Students for Justice in Palestine received a citation from the student accountability office.
- Late Feb: Students a part of the BDS movement distributed flyers describing the coalition’s actions.
- March 1: “Your postings failed to include the name(s) of the individual(s) posting, date posted, and were not posted in designated spaces in accordance with the ‘Notices, Posters, Banners, and Printed Announcements’ policy … Note that future policy violations can be referred to Student Accountability to address on an individual basis, which may include the identified leaders of an unrecognized organization in accordance with the ‘Suspended, Expelled, or Otherwise Unrecognized Organizations’ policy.” – Dean Neil Jamerson
- Mar 5: Vanderbilt canceled SJP’s meeting room reservation for a meeting the next day which implied that the SJP, a registered student organization, was a guise for an unregistered student group named the Vanderbilt Divest Coalition.
- Mar 6: Dean Jamerson wrote in an email that the presidents of the student groups will need to “move away from Vanderbilt Divest Coalition moniker given the actions of those involved with VDC to date are organizational in nature … You should prepare for potential protests of the meeting should you move forward in person.”
- Mar 14: Vanderbilt removed SJP’s reservation to display its info wall due to landscaping at SJP’s reserved area that the wall might tip over.
- Mid March: The university rejected the BDS petition hearing from student government.
- Mar 18: Palestine Legal sent Vanderbilt General Counsel a cease-and-desist letter stating that the university was violating students’ rights and urging the school to let a BDS vote go forward. Students put up SJP’s wall in a different location.
- Mar 18-22: Vanderbilt told students that the student government vote for BDS would not happen because it would endanger the university’s contracts under state and federal law. 25 faculty members fought this assumption in a letter stating the university was using “legality as a facade to quash student activism.”
- March 26: 27 students entered the closed Kirkland Hall to protest activism suppression. Vanderbilt’s student newspaper reported that 24 hours after entering Kirkland Hall, the Vanderbilt Police Department removed 25 students. 16 students were suspended (interim) and 3 were arrested for bodily injury. A Nashville Scene reporter Eli Motycka, who has been closely reporting on this story, was arrested as well. These charges were later dismissed. An encampment began, which consisted of students sleeping outside on campus on Kirkland lawn.
- Mar 29: Students sent a letter to the university highlighting the history of free speech at Vanderbilt.
- May 1: 200+ students and community members protested at Centennial Park in support of the DVS movement and against the suspensions and expulsions of protesters on March 26th.
- May 4: The encampment officially ended.
“Kirkland is a very important place on campus in terms of historic protests happening, so I think the fact that they are protesting in front peacefully, people are doing the work and making sure their voices are heard.”
— Lily, a Vanderbilt student (Source)
Sources:
Vanderbilt students protest over Israel-divestment: What to know (tennessean.com)
Palestine solidarity encampment ends, students intend to return in fall – The Vanderbilt Hustler