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Students ‘are completely against all the exploitation and the complicity in genocide’
Approximately 25 student protesters interrupted the Georgetown University senior convocation last Thursday to demand divestment from Israel, a “living wage” for workers, and denial of campus access to U.S. immigration officials.
According to The Hoya, the activists started yelling during interim President Robert Groves’ speech (which can be heard here beginning at the 1:46.58 mark), were escorted out by campus police, and then resumed their protest at the entrance to the event.
The activists had begun by shouting “Groves, Groves, you can’t hide! We can see your greedy side!” The Georgetown Voice reports.
Student Natalie Gustin, a culture & politics major with a minor in disability studies, expressed “disappointment” at university officials’ “response to student activism” during her years at Georgetown.
“That’s not a university that I’m proud of,” Gustin (pictured) told the Hoya. “Robert Groves does not deserve my respect. He does not deserve me listening to him speak while he has refused to listen to us speak.”
Gustin, who said she’s learned from disability studies experts about the “systems of oppression continuously perpetrated by capitalist and imperialist Western system,” added “we walked out because the university chooses profit over people, and we’re here for people over profit.”
Anna Broderick, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine and Georgetown’s Coalition for Workers’ Rights, said “students walked out of [Groves’] speech to show [they] are completely against all the exploitation and the complicity in genocide that he has facilitated during his time as interim president,” according the Voice report.
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Student Fiona Naughton said Georgetown “is the encapsulation of the ongoing support of the American imperial project,” and added she “didn’t want to see President Groves accept a check… when our university […] grows his salaries paid through the active genocide of the people of Gaza.
“I’m here today because I know that my college experience was made possible through the exploitation of Georgetown’s workers, and I’m here protesting that.”
Olivia Mason noted she and her fellow demonstrators “aimed to remain respectful” of the event and other students by engaging in the “very explicit action” of exiting when asked to do so: “We immediately went outside the gate and proceeded to exercise our First Amendment rights.”
A Georgetown spokesperson pointed to its Speech and Expression Policy, which gives the university the discretion to “regulate the ‘time, place and manner’ of expression to ensure it does not disrupt university activities.”
The spokesperson noted that, unlike in this case, those “wishing to protest at an event” are permitted to do so as long as they do not infringe upon a “speaker’s right to free speech and the audience’s right to see and hear.”
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