Rice Students for Justice in Palestine protest academic quad celebration

By James Cancelarich     9/18/24 12:37am

While many gathered to celebrate the reopening of the academic quad, Rice Students for Justice in Palestine staged a walkout just a few hundred feet from the festivities, protesting what they described as a shameless celebration, according to a Sept. 10 Instagram post.

About 50 to 60 people attended the protest, held in Founder’s Court, according to the Rice University Police Department. During the protest, attendees listened to speeches, read poetry and denounced Rice’s “complicity in the ongoing genocide,” according to a Sept. 16 Instagram post. Many protesters signed an open letter to university President Reggie DesRoches and the board of trustees, calling for Rice to divest from corporations “complicit in Israeli apartheid,” release an official statement “condemning the genocide” and reverse recent restrictions on postering and demonstrations.

“If divestment is a political instrument, then so is investment in the first place,” the letter reads. “Rice University administrators continually met student activism with suppression, attempts to quash our political momentum and a lack of willingness to seriously engage with our demands for change.” 

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Erica Augenstein, an  SJP representative, said the walkout was staged to encourage students to politically engage with their university.

“Walkouts are symbolic because they call attention in the moment in the classroom to political duty, moral obligation, and they empower individuals who do choose to walk out,” Augenstein, a Ph.D. candidate in the history department, said. “It gives them the choice to make that statement.” 

Matti Haacke, another SJP representative, said that the protest was held so that attendees of the quad reopening celebration, including President Reggie DesRoches, could hear their protest.

“Our goal [was] to have them hear our voices, to amplify our words, amplify what we’re saying, amplify our demands,” Haacke, a Sid Richardson College senior, said.

“Rice deeply values and will continue to uphold the right to responsible personal expression, including through protest, which is critical to the academic mission,” Provost Amy Dittmar wrote in an email to the Thresher. Dittmar visited the walkout and viewed the protestors’ open letter.

“Our students came together to exercise those rights and demonstrated peacefully,” Dittmar continued. Working with the students, the administration took great care to ensure that all activities were conducted in a manner that safeguarded the well-being of every member of the Rice community.”

Haacke said that the letter was presented to Josh Earnest, a member of Rice’s Board of Trustees. 

“At Rice, we believe that the right to responsible, personal expression and protest must be maintained and protected, particularly on a university campus,” DesRoches wrote in an email to the Thresher. “Our students expressed themselves peacefully. I am pleased with the way the Rice University Police Department supported and protected our students with moderation and open communication. We are grateful for the respect and tolerance members of the Rice community continue to show each other despite differences of perspectives.” 

Shifa Rahman ’22 said they were invited to attend the quad reopening celebration, where they walked out during the ceremony wearing a Palestinian flag, to join the protest. A university spokesperson confirmed that Rahman was an invited guest to the quad reopening celebration.

Rahman was one of the leaders of the “Down with Willy” movement, which sought to examine Rice’s segregationist past and relationship with slavery. The movement led, in part, to the redesign of the academic quad that removed the William Marsh Rice statue from its central pedestal and placed it in a corner of the quad. 

“The message that I hope to send to Rice is one to fulfill a greater completion of the eradication of white supremacy, and also to point out that Rice, the institution, is still complicit in the genocide of Palestine,” Rahman said. “[We are] recognizing the ways in which we undo colonial legacy, the way we undo white supremacist legacy, the way we remove genocidal legacy, the ways in which dehumanization is present for both Black people and Palestinians. I think it was important to bridge them together, rather than dividing.”

Thomas Woltz, one of the landscape architects who redesigned the quad, acknowledged the audible chants from the SJP walkout during his speech at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

“This is what we get to do in a democracy, and I think it’s beautiful,” Woltz said.

The walkout was the first major protest held by SJP after the revision of policy 820, which implemented new time limits and location restrictions for campus demonstrations. Haacke said that SJP was not allowed to use amplified sound, and that there was a strict time limit on the protest — RUPD told organizers to shut down the protest at around 3:30 p.m. and began to remove the metal barricades shortly after. 

Haacke said that while he was disappointed in the restrictions, their ultimate goal was to support the student body who came to the demonstration.

“We weren’t trying to put our student body at risk,” Haacke said. “We’re trying to bring each other together. We’re trying to elevate our demands, get our voices heard.”

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