As of this release, the disciplinary proceedings against ten students for alleged association with the Gaza Solidarity Encampment have ended in the dismissal of the complaints, and the four seniors whose degrees were withheld have received their degrees. One graduate student’s degree remained withheld, after being targeted and singled out for separate disciplinary proceedings through a different office. As of today, Monday, August 12, the remaining degree was conferred after immense public pressure.
On May 24th, four graduating seniors received emails from the University informing them that their degrees would not be conferred at graduation. On Friday, June 7th, an additional six non-graduating students received emails from the University notifying them that they also faced disciplinary proceedings as alleged “student leaders” of the encampment. These biased complaints, on the basis of which the university withheld degrees, did not identify any of these individual students by name, with the university supplying names for the complaints. These complaints have now been dismissed.
However, on May 31, the day of their divisional graduation ceremony, a graduate student was informed that their degree was being withheld in a separate proceeding, and their degree remained withheld over two months later. This student was also surveilled by UChicago and its private police, UCPD, via off campus security footage, including footage obtained from the student’s private, off-campus residential building. Even though that student’s degree has now been conferred, their experience shows that UChicago would rather surveil its students for protesting genocide than address its investments in genocide or acknowledge that universities in Gaza have been destroyed.
In a letter signed by 23 UChicago professors with experience studying policing, surveillance, authoritarianism, privacy, structural racism, and/or state and corporate power more broadly, the professors expressed alarm at the extensive surveillance of the student, saying:
“We are alarmed at what appears to be improper UCPD involvement in an academic disciplinary matter … . Furthermore, UCPD surveillance of a student in their private residence under any circumstances raises legal red flags. UCPD’s investigative powers are delegated by the state of Illinois pursuant to the Private College Campus Police Act and cannot be exercised outside of constitutional rules governing policing conduct – in this case, the requirement of a warrant based on probable cause for conducting surveillance in private residences. UCPD cannot toggle between being a public actor with police powers one moment and a private actor free of constitutional restraints on policing whenever convenient. The Dean of Students’ office cannot simply deputize the UCPD and its public police powers to investigate an academic disciplinary matter.
Finally, the apparently extensive use of surveillance images from throughout Hyde Park raises a concern that at least some of the cameras used were actually those belonging to the city of Chicago. If so, it is possible that the University obtained the images from the Chicago Police Department. We seek clarification as to the involvement of any governmental bodies in this case.”
The university also committed multiple procedural violations in its disciplinary proceedings against the ten students for the encampment including: administrators appointing an ad hoc faculty chair in order to facilitate withholding degrees from Palestinian and pro-Palestine students; administrators attached individuals’ names to anti-Palestinian racist complaints against UCUP (filed by complainants with lengthy histories of espousing white nationalist views) and refused to specify the individual bases for identifying these students; the administrators admitted broadly that social media and press were used to flag students.
This notice was sent months after graduation—during which UCPD pepper sprayed and brutally attacked protestors— as well as, months after the Gaza Solidarity Encampment was raided by UCPD, one of the largest private police forces in the country.
“Finally receiving my degree doesn’t feel like a victory- not when my peers were being unjustly prosecuted and the University remains invested in entities that murder my family in Palestine,” says fourth-year Youssef Hasweh, a Palestinian and one of the students affected by the University’s disciplinary action. In an unprecedented disciplinary process, the university singled out and refused to dismiss disciplinary actions for one student, withholding their degree until this week. “The UChicago community has never been so polarized from admin. The endless amount of pressure allowed my degree to be conferred and my future to begin. There are still so many futures on pause and ending every day in Palestine. I’d give up my degree again and again to stand firmly against UChicago’s investments. No education is worth 40,000 lives.”
