Student protesters are negotiating with Brown University administrators over terms that could end a pro-Palestinian encampent at the school’s Providence campus and meet some of the activists’ demands, according to several students familiar with the discussions.
On Monday at 3 p.m., a group of six student activists met with two administrators to discuss an offer Brown President Christina Paxson made earlier in the day for students to present a proposal related to divestment to the school’s governing board, the Brown Corporation Board, as an advisory body recommended last week. The students in the negotiating committee say the offer does not go far enough, because it does not require the Corporation to take a vote. Students intend to draft a counter-offer and bring it back to the administrators for a new round of negotiations on Tuesday.
Senior Isabella Garo, who is on the negotiating team, said there are several additional points the students would like to add, but chief among them is requiring the Brown Corporation Board to not only hear the students out on their divestment proposal, but also to vote on it.
“We’ve had so many meetings in the past. And so we’re feeling quite pessimistic about it,” she said. “The commitment to vote on a divestment resolution was the hard line for us.”
As a part of the deal, the school has set terms for clearing the encampment. On Monday morning, Vice President for Student Life Eric Estes sent an email telling protesting students the grounds of the dispersal of the encampment: “the encampment must be cleared of all individuals. All students involved will be expected to leave the College Green, remove all belongings and trash soon — in a mutually agreed upon time period — and cannot return to any encampment or participate in any activities related to any encampment or that violate University Policy this academic year.”
The school previously set a deadline for students at the encampment to admit to violating the school’s policy or face discipline for Monday at 5pm. In light of the ongoing negotiations, that deadline has been pushed until Tuesday at 5pm. The encampment first began last Wednesday at around 6am.
Students have been calling on the board to vote on a proposal to divest the school’s endowment from companies they say profit from human rights abuses against Palestinians.
In a letter to students sent Monday, Paxson also said she would not take up the advisory group’s second recommendation, which is for the school to drop charges against student protesters from earlier in the academic year. In December, 41 students were arrested while protesting in an administrative building after hours.
“Just as the University did not drop charges against more than 250 students who trespassed in University Hall in 1992, I believe it would be a mistake to do so now,” Paxson wrote. “The practice of civil disobedience means accepting the consequences of decisions on matters of conscience.”
In his email to students Monday, Estes warned if students do not accept the school’s offer and continue the encampment, they should be “prepared for outcomes including separation from the University in the form of a year or more of suspension or expulsion.”
Students are likely to take a vote on whether to clear the encampment after terms of the divestment proposal are discussed in the meeting on Tuesday morning.
The school’s offer to hear a divestment proposal is a departure from Paxson’s approach to protesters so far. The president previously refused to bring a proposal to the board, saying the school should not use its endowment “to ‘take a side’ on issues on which thoughtful people vehemently disagree.”
A professor who has visited the encampment, Timmons Roberts, called the students’ demands “reasonable,” and said it makes sense for students to petition their university.
“This is also just about direct influence. I think it’s about social license and raising an issue, changing norms, making something not OK that is otherwise treated by the society as OK,” he said. “Even if they don’t win the concessions they hope for, they have at least let the world know that there are Americans who think that this is not OK, what is going on in Gaza with our support.”
At noon on Monday, following the announcement about the offer for students to present a divestment proposal, hundreds of students and campus community members rallied on the main green, continuing to push for the administration to divest, and to drop charges against student protesters. Hundreds of pro-Palestinian students again rallied late Monday afternoon, marching around the administrative building as student negotiators met with administrators.