Strike won’t end until school engages in ‘good faith’ — ‘in the meantime, we’re going to starve’
Eight students at Dartmouth University have joined 19 of their Ivy League peers at Brown U. in hunger striking for divestment from Israel, among other reasons.
According to The Dartmouth, the so-called Dartmouth New Deal Coalition said the strike is a “last resort” after months of “apathetic, cruel and provocative measures” by school officials regarding the “genocide” in Gaza.
In an email to the student paper, the hunger strikers (pictured) said “seeing no other way to have their voices heard, [they] will subject themselves to an indefinite period of starvation.”
In a separate letter to Dartmouth President Sian Beilock, the New Deal Coalition demanded charges be dropped against students Roan Wade and Kevin Engel, who had illegally camped out at night in front of Parkhurst Hall, and allegedly threatened to “escalate” the matter and take “physical action” against administrators.
In support of this demand, the Coalition cited the (ultimately powerless) Student Government, which had deemed Wade’s and Engel’s actions “civil nonviolent disobedience.”
The hunger strikers also want Dartmouth to “release a public statement recognizing the existence of Palestinian students as a valuable part of the Dartmouth community, and openly commit to protecting them from all forms of racism and violence.”
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Wade and Engel claimed they’ve received “hate mail and death threats, and the former said Dartmouth “has decided that [his] life is not worth protecting.”
In an apparent reference to the hunger strike, Wade added he’d rather have “more agency” over his personal health.
Wade added that they do not believe there are other modes to achieve change aside from hunger strikes.
“We have reached a point where it has become explicitly clear that there are no democratic mechanisms to achieve change at this university,” Wade said. “At this point, hunger striking feels like the only option.”
[Hunger striker Ramsey] Alsheikh shared a similar sentiment.
“We’re doing this because the administration has left us with no option, no avenue for dialogue, despite all of their grandiose claims of ‘brave spaces,’” he said. “And at this point, we only have our bodies to put on the line.” …
According to Alsheikh, the strike won’t end until the strikers feel the College genuinely and “in good faith” engages with their demands.
“In the meantime, we’re going to starve,” he said. “The decision is theirs.”
Last week, over two dozen Harvard students demonstrated solidarity with the Brown hunger strikers by not eating for a whole … twelve hours. In other words, they demonstrated how the term “breakfast” originated.
MORE: New Dartmouth president pledges emphasis on ‘diversity of perspectives,’ Dialogue Project
IMAGE: The Dartmouth/Facebook
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