Brown University has set a deadline for Monday at 5 p.m. for about 180 students identified during ID checks at a Pro-Palestinian encampment on campus to either accept responsibility for their alleged violations of the code of student conduct or face an administrative hearing that could result in “separation” from the university, a university spokesman confirmed Saturday.
The confidential letters came from Greg Caso, Brown’s assistant dean of student conduct & community standards, which arrived in students’ inboxes Saturday morning, according to information students shared with The Public’s Radio. If the recipients fail to click on a link to a “Letter Resolution Option Form” and indicate their response to the alleged violations by Monday’s deadline, the letter says, the university will “proceed with an administrative review meeting.”
Students were meeting to decide how to respond to the letters, said Rafi Ash, a Brown encampment spokesperson, said Saturday. “We’re not going to be intimidated by this,” Ash said. He called the letter a “very clear escalation” by the administration.
Of the 180 letters that the university said it was sending out, only a small proportion appear to have been sent to people who self-identify as “encampers,” meaning they are sleeping in the tents, according to a spokesperson for Brown Divest Coalition, the group behind the encampment and many of the pro-Palestinian actions this year. At least 30 people who are “encampers,” have received the letters, the spokesperson said. Most of the others, she said, appear to have been sent to students who stopped by the encampment, which is located on the university’s Campus Green, a main thoroughfare for the university that is also accessible to the surrounding community.
The university’s disciplinary warning letters arrived on the fourth day of the encampment, which began last Wednesday morning. The mood at the encampment had lifted Thursday night, Ash said, after the Brown University Community Council voted to support two of the protesters’ demands.
The council, which serves as an advisory body, voted to recommend that the university’s president allow students to make a presentation to the Brown Corporation Board, which governs the university and its $6.6 billion endowment, about divesting from seven funds the protestors say facilitate human rights abuses in the Palestinian Territories. The council also approved allowing the students to request that charges be dropped against a group of 41 students arrested during a Dec. 11 protest after hours in an on-campus administrative building.
On Saturday, though, the mood changed, Ash said, when students received the disciplinary warning emails. “It feels like this crackdown is happening because the administration is in many ways afraid of our success,’’ Ash said. “And it’s seeing the momentum and the power of the student movement on this campus and across the country.’’
Talia LeVine, 18, a freshman from Seattle, WA, said on Saturday that she was still considering how to respond to her warning letter.
“The university is going to really try to suppress our voices and have these punishments for activism and kind of just scare us,’’ LeVine said. Though she expressed concern about the threat of disciplinary action, she said that “what’s more important to me is that I uphold my Jewish values of Tikkun olam, which means repair the world, because that’s what I was really raised.’’
A co-founder of BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now, LeVine said that she has been visiting the encampment and supporting the protestors, but had decided not to join them due to a medical issue. So she said that she was puzzled by the language in the university’s letter. “The weird thing,’’ LeVine said, is that “because I’m not an encamper I was never told to leave the encampment.”
Asked if visiting the encampment is considered a violation of school conduct rules, Brian Clark, the university spokesman, said that “presence at the unauthorized encampment is participation.’’
The encampment is located on the university’s main Campus Green, which is accessible to people connected to the university as well as the surrounding community.
The latest letters followed “alerts” previously sent to the students notifying them of the alleged conduct violations,’’ Clark said. The initial alert, he said, also recommends that students review the Code of Student Conduct and Student Conduct Procedures, and offers resources and advises them that the office will follow up with further details. “For the vast majority of students — those without prior related conduct code violations — the University has now followed up today about next steps in the student conduct process,’’ Clark said.
“Discipline for any student found responsible through the conduct process will depend on behavior of the participants and other factors,’’ Clark said, “including prior conduct code violations. While we cannot speculate about specific conduct findings, outcomes may include probation or separation from the University.”