On March 15, students and staff at the University of British Columbia (UBC) began a hunger strike to protest the administration's stalling of negotiations for divestment. Two days later, 7,000 students voted to go on strike to pressure their university to adopt their demands. This comes just as Israel one-sidedly cancels the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
UBC Divest, the organization behind these actions, is a coalition made up of students, staff, faculty and alumni groups. They came together to pressure UBC to stop investing in companies complicit in the genocide and ethnic cleansing and cut ties with Israeli universities which are assisting in the oppression of Palestinians.
The results of the vote for the strike were 76% in favour, with a turnout of 19% of the student population. In comparison, only 17% of the more than 60,000 UBC students voted in the student union's most recent general election. Frank*, an organizer at UBC, underscored the nature of this victory as “a really resounding success, extremely strong.”
“This is the result of all of that work that people have been doing across the movement, across the student body. This is a big culmination showing that, yes, students don't accept investment in genocide.”
This is not the first time that students have been called upon to vote on a boycott, divestment and sanction motion. Between 2017 and 2022, two attempted votes were blocked by the administration, and one motion that passed was ignored entirely. It was the start of the genocide in 2023 and this attitude that forced the students to set up camp for 71 days last year, finally forcing the administration to negotiate with them. (more...)
UBC Students Escalate Protests for Boycott and Divestment
No comments:
Post a Comment