May 1, 2024

We, the undersigned faculty, staff, and members of the WGSS community, express our deep concern regarding the violent treatment of protesters on our University campus. We stand in solidarity with OSU students, faculty and staff who peacefully exercised their fundamental rights to protest Israel’s unyielding violence and destruction in Gaza and faced police violence in response.

We underscore the importance of student demands of OSU divestment from Israel. This demand is being made in response to the state’s indifference to Palestinian life, violations of international law, and denial of fundamental human rights to be protected from genocide and receive humanitarian assistance.

We firmly support our students’ right to gather on the grounds of their own university and to be heard by OSU administration without fear of police violence. The events of last week must be understood within the context of a long history of colonial violence and dispossession of which we are all a part. The excessive force that occurred last week happened on the ancestral and contemporary territory of indigenous tribes who were forcibly removed. As members of this university, we must contend with this legacy and choose to halt such continued colonial violence.

The police response to student protest follows national, historical patterns of police violence that is structurally and disproportionately wielded against Black, brown, queer, trans and migrant people.  Many of our students experienced genuine trauma in the course of being held and processed—trauma which will negatively impact their experience of OSU and of college education as a whole. Police violence should never be wielded against peaceful student protest on our campus or elsewhere.

We are horrified and dismayed at the criminalization of our students. Our students come to OSU with the expectation to receive higher education under an administration that leads by example regarding its educational mission and values. These core values include, first and foremost, the importance of facilitating civil discourse amongst those with diverging views. Last week’s events reflect a dramatic failure to provide our students with such leadership.

We do not accept the rationale currently being put forward by the administration that blames the students’ use of the “encampment” strategy as justification for excessive police violence and criminalization of the peaceful expression of political views. No one should be subjected to such violence under any circumstances. Students sitting, chanting, singing, and praying peacefully on the South oval—a place that is explicitly dedicated to facilitating education, student gatherings, student groups’ activities, and the public sharing of information on a regular basis—were told that they were guilty of criminal trespass. What is more, graduate students sitting on the lawn reading for their dissertation work were arrested when they did not agree to leave. Students sitting alone were arrested. These are simply not instances of violations of the university’s “space use policy”, but uses of OSU space for the exact purpose for its existence: the pursuit of higher education.

 Concretely, we call upon OSU’s administration:

• To undertake all effort possible to support the dismissal and expungement of criminal charges and protect our students and community members from other disciplinary action;

• To actively provide resources to students traumatized by police violence;

• To refrain from any future actions that expose students to disproportionate and excessive police violence;

• To demonstrate leadership that aligns with the core mission and values of our institution, which includes seeking connections across differences, welcoming and facilitating constructive dialogue on diverging views, and actively engaging with the perspectives of our student groups who are attempting to act as the conscience of our intellectual community;

• To meet the demand of our students to disclose OSU’s financial ties to Israel;

• To undertake any action legally possible to divest from Israel and prevent OSU’s continued complicity in the humanitarian disaster in Gaza.

As WGSS faculty, we offer our experience and expertise in finding creative ways to do this. In expressing our solidarity with the student organizers, we recognize that liberation of Palestinians is connected to Black liberation movements, and to liberation for all. We contend that justice must be rooted in intersectional, transnational understandings of global history. This is, after all, what we are here to teach and learn as educators. This, not the maintenance of systems of power, is the purpose of the university. 

In closing, we want to acknowledge the courage of our WGSS students who were subjected to excessive police violence on our campus.

Respectfully,

Mytheli Sreenivas, Chair and Designated Professor, Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Bayan Abusneineh, Provost Fellow to Assistant Professor, Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Jessica Delgado, Associate Professor, Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Department of History

Jian Neo Chen, Associate Professor, Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Guisela Latorre, Professor, Department of  Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Dionne Lee, Assistant Professor, Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Department of Art

Treva Lindsey, Professor, Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Linda Mizejewski, Professor, Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Ashley Smith-Purviance, Assistant Professor, Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Department of African American and African Studies

Jennifer Suchland, Associate Professor, Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures

Mary Thomas, Professor, Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Lyn K.L. Tjon Soei Len, Assistant Professor, Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Shannon Winnubst, Professor, Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies