Syracuse University’s Graduate Student Organization voted Wednesday to call for a University Senate committee to investigate the treatment of #NotAgainSU organizers.

#NotAgainSU, a movement led by Black students, has occupied Crouse-Hinds since Feb. 17 to continue its protests of at least 30 racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic incidents that have occurred at or near SU since early November.

DPS sealed off Crouse-Hinds the morning of Feb. 17, barring outside food, medicine and other supplies from entering the building until Wednesday afternoon. SU provided lunch and dinner to organizers Tuesday and breakfast Wednesday. University officials said the students were allowed to leave the building, which reopened Thursday, at any time.

GSO passed a resolution at its senate meeting Wednesday night urging USen to create an ad hoc committee to investigate the decision-making parties behind the university’s response to the occupation. The University Senate Agenda Committee should ensure that the ad hoc committee is staffed impartially and is free from conflicts of interest, the resolution said.

“The goal of this committee is to get answers: what happened, how it happened, the decision making processes behind that,” said Jack Wilson, co-chair of the civic engagement committee. “Getting in detail to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.”

The resolution refers to the proposed committee as the 2/17 committee, named after the date #NotAgainSU’s occupation of Crouse-Hinds started.

Mirjavad Hashemi, GSO president, criticized the university’s treatment of the protesters. Restricting the protesters’ access to food, medicine and other supplies was inhumane, he said.

“That was shameful. And that was in stark contrast with the values that our university claims that they uphold,” Hashemi said. “This is not who we are.”

#NotAgainSU protesters who remained inside Crouse-Hinds after 9 p.m. on Feb. 17 received interim suspensions from the university. Chancellor Kent Syverud announced at a USen meeting Feb. 19 those suspensions had been rescinded.

SU officials have also admitted to misidentifying four students who received interim suspensions despite not attending the Crouse-Hinds occupation.

Hashemi expressed concerns over the misidentification of the protesters. It isn’t possible for the university to have identified individual protesters manually out of the entire student population at SU, he said.

The university should inform students if any facial recognition technology had been used to identify or surveil students, Hashemi said.

“We need some transparency on how all this happened,” Hashemi said. “The problem is we don’t know what was the decision-making process that led to such inhumane decisions from the administration.”

More than 100 graduate students and workers who identify as Black, indigenous and people of color, as well as international students, have participated in a strike since Feb. 19. Graduate students have said their strike will not end until the university meets the demands of #NotAgainSU.

The GSO Senate passed a separate resolution in support of the labor strike. The resolution called for the GSO president and executive board to utilize their resources to protect graduate student strikers from any retaliation from their departments, the graduate school or the university.

An earlier version of the resolution included language stating GSO endorsed the demands of the striking graduate students. The senate voted to rewrite this portion of the resolution after multiple students raised concerns about the feasibility of the demands.

Senators expressed concerns over the strikers’ calls for the resignation of SU administrators, including Syverud. These demands might not be reasonable to implement and may hinder GSO’s ability to negotiate with the university, one graduate student in attendance said.

Published on February 27, 2020 at 12:04 am

Contact Chris: cjhippen@syr.edu