College students demand divestment

As the 54th anniversary of the Kent State shooting falls on Saturday, students in universities across the country are once again rallying against an overseas war. On May 4, 1970, Allison Krause, 19, Sandy Scheuer, 20, William Schroeder, 19, and Jeffrey Miller, 20, were killed by the Ohio National Guard at the Kent State University campus during a demonstration opposing the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Nine other students were injured. And in recent weeks, hundreds of college students at campuses across the country have been arrested during campus protests against the Israel-Hamas War, which started in October 2023. Nationally, more than 2,300 arrests have been made at college campuses. And, the response from police and other law enforcement to these students have sparked concerns that another Kent State massacre could occur, including protests and police presence at other Ohio college campuses. But what are they asking for? According to a petition circulating online, students, staff and faculty from Oberlin College, Denison University, Kenyon College and the College of Wooster have asked their university administrations to: • Publicly join the call for an immediate ceasefire • Uphold the right to free speech for students, staff, faculty and student organizations • Reject pressure to unjustly punish or investigate students, staff, faculty and organizations that oppose Israel • Reject the false narrative that advocating for Palestinian rights is antisemitic And on Monday, more than 100 students at Oberlin College joined the thousands of others at universities across the nation to demand an end to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories and asked their universities to divest from the country. "We are Jewish students writing to intervene in the discourse that has taken hold of both our global and local collective political consciousness," Oberlin College students wrote in a letter published in The Oberlin Review on November 17. In the Open Letter from Oberlin's Jewish Students, students "condemned the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people and the larger white supremacist and colonial project that it exemplifies." "We call to memory the 10 years of student protests that it took for Oberlin College to finally divest from apartheid in South Africa," they wrote. "If you are going to elect complacency in the face of apartheid today, we ask that you not use your alleged care for Jewish students to justify that choice." Since the war, more than 34,500 people have died in Gaza, according to ABC News, including women and children, and a bill granting $94 billion in Ukraine and Israel aid packages passed in U.S. legislation last month.