the outside agitator

a new radical tradition

UNC SJP student speech to UNC admin in response to unilateral suspension

Author’s note — 07/25/24: I delivered this speech to six UNC administrators and a police officer in a hearing on June 20th, 2024. That committee then decided to uphold the authoritarian suspension it originally enacted without trial two months earlier. 

I urge you to consider this suppression in the context of UNC admin’s consolidation of power — demonstrated most recently in their July 17th announcement of the end of the student-led Honor Court1. 

See the connection between a genocide that is profitable to UNC, and the multiples of fascism to which they are willing to travel to in order to protect those interests and punish those calling attention to them. 

Good afternoon. My name is [REDACTED] and I am serving on this hearing as the student representative for UNC Students for Justice in Palestine, or SJP. This panel unjustly suspended SJP on May 1st, 2024, showing the world the lengths to which it is willing to go to silence student speech and protect its financial investments. However, the university’s pattern of suppression does not begin here. For months prior, administrators refused to engage with our demands, declining meeting after meeting and even rejecting the demand for financial transparency. Admin’s crackdown of SJP’s on-campus demonstrations has been the most forceful and violent defense of the status quo seen at UNC in years. 

The decision to silence one of the few organizations on this campus that continues to center Palestinian voices and justice for Palestinians demonstrates to our campus community where administration stands, not only on student dissent but also on genocide. It is unsurprising that while being investigated by the Department of Education for a Title VI complaint regarding anti-Palestinian racism, the university has actively chosen to bolster this case against itself.  For a university that touts its respect for American institutions, as well as a motto of “lux libertas”, this flagrant disregard of current federal investigations is quite concerning.

The formal complaints that the university weaponizes against SJP perpetuate the illusion that it holds some moral high ground. In reality, however, you have already violated our civil rights by deploying police to brutalize us and violating the principle of due process in suspending SJP without a trial for a month and twenty days. The fine print describing the events of this hearing claim that SJP is presumed innocent until proven guilty, while this panel’s actions have only demonstrated the exact opposite. 

Further, the university has already been engaging us in Honor Court proceedings for the same allegations that the EEAC suspension has already sanctioned us for without trial. This summary suspension of SJP delegitimizes Honor Court proceedings. If we are meant to respect the Honor Court, why is the university administration not expected to do the same? 

This panel suspended SJP with charges that severely misrepresent the truth and are unduly severe. At several of the demonstrations cited, the allegation of disruption to University operations continues to be levied, while testimony and evidence consistently demonstrate otherwise. Regarding November 17th at South Building, witnesses in the building described not even realizing that anything out of the ordinary was happening during the sit-in. After already completing Honor Court proceedings once we are being alleged and tried for this charge a second time. 

At BOTH the Abbey Speaker Series event on January 22nd and the Board of Trustees meeting on March 28th, students left when they were instructed to, and the proceedings on both days continued in their absence. Alleging that students attempted to “interfere in the Last Lecture event” when students merely chanted and marched outdoors in a shared public space demonstrates the arbitrary nature of the allegations. 

You say that we disrupted operations, but at every cited event, we left upon being asked, and at every event the speakers continued their presentations after students left. The lack of a clear definition of disruption leads one to question if University administration is merely punishing SJP for causing discomfort or for its association with Palestinian identity.

Alleging that the encampment caused littering and damage to Polk Place is wholly ignorant of the community space it created. Numerous people have testified against this allegation in the written testimony we’ve submitted. Citing damage to the landscaping of Polk Place is absurd, as the quad typically welcomes activities that inherently incur wear to the lawn, like sitting and laying. SJP stands united with UE150, the service workers’ union at UNC, and all participants were committed to stewarding the place we had built collectively. Students frequently picked up and removed trash from the premises, even after groundskeepers were told to stop servicing the area. I think it is more relevant to call attention to the university’s decision to halt garbage collection near the encampment. Further, Lee Roberts and Chris Clemens falsely claimed in an email to the entire university on April 30th that participants of the encampment damaged and destroyed public property. Conveniently enough, all of the images attached to that email were taken AFTER the police violently swept the encampment and destroyed thousands of dollars worth of protestors’ belongings. 

Further, the charges allege that the encampment disrupted academic operations on and around April 30th. However, the encampment’s raid and students’ arrests had all happened before 6am that day, before academic operations had even begun. For the duration of its existence, the encampment did not disrupt any academic operations. To the contrary, it supplemented them. The only material disruption to academic operations occurred on the university’s part when several hours later, administration decided to cancel classes across campus. Community members described receiving the text message canceling classes without any context as confusing, as they were completely unaware of what was occurring on the quad.

At that time, students had gathered on the quad to protest the arrests of their peers at an event organized by Faculty for Justice in Palestine. It was only after the event and programming ended that the protestors who were gathered, many of whom were members of the campus community unaffiliated with SJP, acted autonomously and collectively to display the Palestinian flag. This once again demonstrates the expansive movement for a Free Palestine. The institutional power held by this university will continue to draw criticism from within campus boundaries and beyond. The American flag was re-erected on Polk Place shortly thereafter, disproving the allegation that the flagpole was damaged in the process. 

The university responded with disproportionate violence. Police pulled a student by their hair to the ground. Another student had their knee dislocated, several were pepper sprayed, one had a broken rib, and many were concussed. UNC Assistant Chief of Police Rasheem Holland pushed a barricade onto and toppled a student in a wheelchair. He then proceeded to stand on the barricade, pinning her to the ground. Police stood by as counterprotestors spewed racist slurs at demonstrators and enabled several counterprotestors to violently attack pro-Palestinian students who were present. 

In the folder of materials, I have attached a social media post documenting a mob of counterprotestors kicking and beating a pro-Palestinian student.

In that folder, I have also attached a video of Officer Darin Lee repeatedly spitting on the Palestinian flag while being encouraged by another officer. 

Further, many witnessed UNC Women’s Soccer Coach Chris Ducar forcing a pro-Palestinian community member into a headlock. I have attached an image of this attack, which he continued until forcibly separated from his target by bystanders. 

My peers are traumatized. I cannot emphasize this point enough: It is egregious for the university to wage punishment against SJP for causing a “threat to safety” when these counterprotestors, this coach, and these so-called “public safety” officers have faced NO consequences. The disruptors in this situation are clearly these individuals, or even university administrators, who, in a shameful attempt at silencing protest, sicced militant police on students FOR THE SECOND TIME THAT DAY. 

Punishing us for the actions of autonomous community members reflects how SJP is being held guilty for the entirety of the Palestinian movement on campus. This movement for Palestinian liberation is bigger than UNC SJP alone. Thus, the university’s decision on this case speaks to more than student organizers. This decision takes a stance on dissent and addresses all stakeholders in the university, including those present on campus, those employed by the university, and every single taxpayer that funds this supposedly public institution. 

Thus, every person who participates in our actions is a stakeholder in the operations of this university, rendering the admin’s “outside agitator” narrative a complete fallacy. There can be no outside agitators at the first public university in the nation. Instead of “public”, perhaps it would be more fitting to refer to this university and how it is run as “corporate,” as it prioritizes profit and values the will of the board of trustees, governors, and donors disproportionately over that of faculty, students, and North Carolinians.

It is clear in this process that this University ignores the voices of the overwhelming majority of stakeholders. Not only is this a closed trial, but those in charge of adjudicating are the same people suppressing our organizing. I thus call into question this body’s ability to make a just decision in this trial without a conflict of interest. 

In all honesty, if this board seeks accountability for these protests, I implore you all to look inward at how UNC administration’s actions led students to protest. In a statement published shortly after police violently swept the Triangle Gaza Solidarity Encampment and arrested students, student body president Jaleah Taylor describes that the actions taken on the morning of April 30th  “are a result of the voices of Students for Justice in Palestine not being prioritized in the community.” 

Many organizations across campus signed their support for demands for UNC to 

  1. grant amnesty to student protestors,
  2. reinstate UNC SJP as a student organization,
  3. disclose all endowment investments,
  4. completely divest from companies and financial instruments complicit in Israel’s apartheid regime and ongoing genocide in Gaza, and
  5. address anti-Arab racism on campus. 

The UNC organizations’ executive boards that signed and endorsed these demands include:

This decision to suspend SJP for a month and twenty days stains the Carolina I am proud to be a part of. The university’s pattern of punishing student organizers for organizing demonstrates that it does not desire for students to actually be civically engaged like it claims. In the past year, I have been the most civically engaged I have been in my life. I have learned so much in the educational spaces created by students, which speaks to the value that SJP has brought and continues to bring to campus. My coursework has only reaffirmed my commitment to this struggle for liberation. 

In SJP and with other allied organizations, I have built community with incredibly diverse and creative people of all identities. Despite our differences, one thing I share with them all is the commonality of continuing to be undermined and marginalized by this University. 

I don’t expect you all to understand what it is like to feel like your place on campus has been so intensely delegitimized, so in this moment I am speaking to the record and to the Carolina community for when this transcript goes public. 

Students and community organizers are the architects of the innovative and justice-oriented Carolina community that administration takes credit for. 

The students united will prevail in the end, and history will not absolve this university for continuing to suppress us.

It continues to remain crucial that we show up for all interconnected struggles for liberation, until Palestine, Sudan, the Congo, Haiti, Tigray, Kashmir, Turtle Island, our own neighbors, and all oppressed people are free. Thank you.

  1. Much of the available reporting on this decision (Raleigh News & Observer) cites the University’s claim that this decision is unrelated to pro-Palestine protestors uncritically. However, text messages between Board of Trustees members reveal that suppressing protest was a core goal of ending the student-led Honor Court. In fact, it had chosen to sentence SJP minimally in honor court proceedings shortly prior to admin’s announcement

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