The GW
HATCHET
May 13, 2024 Vol. 121 Iss. 1
AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER • SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904 • ONLINE AT GWHATCHET.COM
Protest negotiations at standstill as students leave campus HANNAH MARR NEWS EDITOR
SACHINI ADIKARI
CONTRIBUTING NEWS EDITOR
After a brief burst in protest in the two days following police’s Wednesday clearing of the proPalestinian encampment in University Yard, campus has fallen quiet. Where U-Yard was once dotted with camping tents, canopies and camping chairs, the lawn is now empty, except for GW Police Department officers and facilities workers occasionally strolling by. Just days before on Wednesday, hundreds of local police had mobilized in U-Yard to clear the tent encampment that occupied the lawn for nearly two weeks to protest the war in Gaza, officers deploying pepper spray and arresting at least six students in the process. Officials blocked off most central campus spaces, including U-Yard, Kogan Plaza and Anniversary Park behind tall metal barricades as campus entered GWorld Safety Mode, restricting access to University spaces. GW staff also removed the giant American flag that workers hung over U-Yard for days before, an apparent response to demonstrators raising a Palestinian flag on the Lisner Hall flagpole during the protest. Demonstrators set up an encampment in University Yard for 13 days to demand officials disclose all investments and academic partnerships, drop all charges against pro-Palestinian student organizations and divest from companies supplying arms to Israel. Metropolitan Police Department officers rejected officials’ request to clear the encampment on the second day of demonstrations and continued to decline requests for more than a week because they said the protest remained peaceful. Just a week away from Commencement, officials brace for an influx of families visiting for graduation and maintain that ceremonies will proceed as normally scheduled — despite a tightening of guidelines prohibiting attendee items like sound devices, posters, banners and flyers. Some universities around the country canceled their graduation celebrations due to safety concerns
BROOKE FORGETTE
CONTRIBUTING NEWS EDITOR
SAGE RUSSELL | SENIOR PHOTO EDITOR Gates obscure University Yard from view, including the plaza’s George Washington statue, which staff shrouded in a sheet after Wednesday’s encampment clearing.
looming from ongoing campus demonstrations demanding their schools divest from companies aiding Israel’s war on Gaza. Some campus demonstrations have continued, with hundreds of officers dispersing an impromptu encampment formed by protesters on F Street outside GW offices and University President Ellen Granberg’s on-campus residence Thursday. After a rapid police response of hundreds of officers who issued five warnings to disperse or face arrest, student protesters said they would fall back and “fight another day.” After the protesters dispersed from the police standoff, MPD officers arrested one demonstrator for alleged assault on an officer, but dropped the charges the next morning, according to an Instagram post from the coalition. Granberg met with student demonstrators on Friday to discuss protesters’ demands, the first conversation with Granberg since protesters assembled the U-Yard encampment. Students live-streamed the sit-down on Instagram as three members tasked with negotiating the coalition’s demands spoke with Granberg and other officials for about an hour and a half. Dean of Students Colette Coleman initially invited seven stu-
MFA CEO to depart role RORY QUEALY NEWS EDITOR
Medical Faculty Associates Chief Executive Officer Barbara Bass will step down from her role to allow “full-time leadership” to helm the medical enterprise, according to a University release Friday. Bill Elliott, the former chief operating officer of the University of Maryland Faculty Physicians, Inc., will take over for Bass on May 13 as interim CEO of the MFA, a nonprofit group of physicians from GW Hospital and the School of Medicine and Health Sciences. The release states that Elliott will direct day-to-day operations and instill “financial stability” into the MFA, which owes GW $200 million and has garnered more than $250 million in deficits since fiscal year 2020. “I welcome the opportunity to implement the work that is already underway, the work that has been planned but not yet started and the work still needed to achieve the goals of the MFA,” Elliott said in the release. Bass, who also serves
Student groups back protesters in slew of statements
as the dean of SMHS and the vice president for health affairs, will lead the University’s “academic clinical enterprise,” which includes education, research, patient care and community engagement, the release states. Bass has served as the MFA’s CEO since January 2020 and was the first physician CEO of the group since 1999. Bass said at the February Faculty Senate meeting that the MFA pays back the money that it owes to the University at a rate that “contributes substantially” to the University’s spendable revenue. “The tasks of running a high-performing faculty physician practice to serve our patients requires intense and undivided attention,” said Ellen Zane, who chairs the MFA Board of Trustees. “Considering the needs of the future, the time is right to ensure that the MFA has full-time leadership.” In September, the MFA brought in a Chief Financial Officer Robin Nichols after Lance Kaplan left the role in February 2023. Nichols previously served as CFO of Warbird Consulting Partners.
AUDEN YURMAN | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER The Medical Faculty Associates building on Pennsylvania Avenue.
dent organizations to a 45-minute meeting at 1 p.m. on Friday with Granberg, Provost Chris Bracey and Chief Financial Officer Bruno Fernandes. She said in her invitation that GW wouldn’t consider changes to its endowment investment strategy, academic partnerships or student conduct processes. Organizers rescheduled the meeting to 5 p.m. and said the University showed a “concerning lack of genuine interest” in engaging with students by scheduling the meeting on short notice during Jummah, the obligatory Friday prayer for Muslims, as well as on the final day of exams. The group also requested that officials exclude Bracey from the conversation because they said he has shown “no regard” for demonstrators’ “safety, wellbeing and dignity,” repeating their claim that he assaulted two students at the U-Yard encampment, including a member of the encampment’s negotiations team. Bracey was not present at the 5 p.m. meeting. Granberg said during the meeting that officials won’t commit to financial disclosure or divest from companies selling technology and weapons to Israel, saying that divestment is not as straightforward as protestors believe it to be. She said she hopes
to continue conversations with demonstrators to see if there’s “something the institution can do.” “I hear that from your standpoint, they should be very, very simple,” Granberg said. “They are not, that is not that easy.” During the meeting, students reaffirmed that part of the intentions of their protests were to seek divestment from institutions with ties to Israel and for the University to disclose its investments. “Eight students have been suspended, because they seek divestment, financial transparency and the protection of their communities,” an organizer said at the meeting. The group was unsatisfied with the results and lack of action on their demands at the meeting, but the discussion concluded with the promise of another sit-down with officials Sunday through Zoom. Before the meeting with students Friday, Granberg said at a Faculty Senate meeting she is willing to continue conversations during the summer. Organizers said they’re not interested in “just having meetings” and want results from administrators. As of Monday morning, there has been no indication that officials have met with student organizers for a second discussion.
Over the last two weeks, more than 70 student groups have voiced support for free speech and condemned the punishment of students protesting at the proPalestinian encampment in University Yard that local police cleared Wednesday. Two days after the encampment started, officials placed seven student protesters on interim suspension April 27 with nine counts of misconduct each, and May 8, the Metropolitan Police Department arrested at least six students for unlawful entry. In the wake of the disciplinary action, student organizations released an array of statements condemning the sanctions, each tailored to their group’s own mission. Members of student organizations said although police cleared the encampment Wednesday — some officers deploying pepper spray and using physical force — the demonstrators will continue to stress their demands to administrators, including dropping charges against pro-Palestinian students and divest from companies funding Israel’s war on Gaza. Members of the GW coalition met with officials Friday after Dean of Students Colette Coleman invited representatives of Arab, Palestinian and Muslim student groups. In her invitation, she prefaced that the University said it is “not considering” meeting many of the organizers demands. Student organization leaders said organizers asked some student groups to issue statements or posted statements on their own behalf condemning the suspension of students and encouraging officials to meet with protesters to discuss their demands. A member of Reproductive Autonomy and Gender Equity, who requested to remain anonymous due to fear of doxxing, said the organization was inspired to issue a statement after the Residence Hall Association posted one condemning the University’s threats of suspension on the second day of the encampment.
Faculty senators critique lack of input on GW’s response to student protests HANNAH MARR NEWS EDITOR
NATALIE NOTE STAFF WRITER
Faculty senators criticized officials’ lack of faculty involvement in their decision-making about GW’s pro-Palestinian encampment at a meeting Friday. Senators said officials could better communicate with and use faculty as a resource for key decisions at a Faculty Senate meeting Friday, three days after local police cleared the pro-Palestinian encampment in University Yard and arrested more than 30 demonstrators. Senators said they could have advised the administration on their handling of the encampment given professors’ relationships with students and expertise in related fields of study like communications and conflict management. Faculty Senate Executive Committee Chair Ilana Feldman said the committee convened for an emergency meeting on the first day of the encampment and sent a letter to University President Ellen Granberg and Provost Chris Bracey that urged for a “de-escalatory approach.” She said the letter also states that senators were willing to help officials communicate with student protesters. Sarah Wagner, a faculty senator and professor of anthropology, said communication from the administration has been “scant,” and she gets more texts from emergency alerts than emails from the offices of the provost or president. She said she imagined that “a lot” of faculty were also unaware of how officials were planning to respond to the encampment. “That has to change as we move forward,” Wagner said. In response to faculty’s questions, Granberg said she expected conversations with demonstrators to continue virtually throughout the summer to help foster dialogue around how the community can come together for the fall semester. She also claimed that “well over” half of people at the encampment were not GW students, so administrators did not consider the demonstration a student protest, which influenced their decisions about the encampment.
JERRY LAI | PHOTOGRAPHER University President Ellen Granberg listens to faculty senators during a meeting Friday.
Jennifer Brinkerhoff, a faculty senator and a professor of public administration and international affairs, shared a written message from a faculty member in the Elliott School of International Affairs who said they were disappointed GW did not use the encampment as an opportunity to “create a space” for education and learning around “contentious and difficult” issues. Brinkerhoff added that it was clear from the Elliott faculty meeting Friday morning that the community is “hurting,” given that there are faculty and students on different sides of a “very complex” international issue. “As a University, as a place of higher learning, as a place that is trying to contribute to society, we have to model how we can hold that complexity and hold that compassion for all parties,” she said. Discussions about strengthening shared governance — the participation of faculty, students and staff in decisionmaking — have dominated Faculty Senate conversations following the departure of former University President Thomas LeBlanc and have continued since after the University made the decision to arm some GWPD officers last April. Senators argued the decision was a violation of GW’s shared governance
principles, which state that all faculty have a role in “key decision making.” Faculty senators also raised concerns about the large American flag that administrators draped over Lisner Hall last Friday after demonstrators removed a GW flag from the flagpole and replaced it with a Palestinian flag. Officials had taken down the flag by midday Sunday, but The Hatchet was unable to verify what time the flag was removed. “I’m gonna echo my concern there because that feels like that was not responsive to students but to outside audiences,” Wagner said. “I just wonder if that was right in the moment. It feels like that may have been more escalatory than otherwise.” David Rain, a faculty senator and a professor of geography and international affairs, said the timing of the University’s placement of the flag during a protest seemed “deliberately provocative.” Brinkerhoff said there “may be context” for the flag’s placement, but its presence has received national attention and become a “soundbite” that implies student protesters are anti-American. “That sends such a horrible message, so I really would urge you to refly the flags where they belong,” Brinkerhoff said.