US college students face muted graduations amid Gaza war protests | VOANews

it's a disappointing end to the school year after student protests over the war in Gaza led to Violent confrontations with Police New York's Columbia University cancelled its main commencement ceremony opting instead to hold smaller celebrations at individual schools on campus I think we've all had a really hard last few weeks and for it to end this way I mean in the grand scheme of things too like we started online as freshman so in totality it's really difficult to end this way some are criticizing Colombia for making the move after clearing out a protest encampment the university has been saying in a lot of the emails addressed to the students and the rest of the university community that the encampment and every other action that protesters were taking was the reason that they were threatening to cancel commencement and the encampment has been cleared for a significant amount of time now as Pro Palestinian protest swept across us campuses some universities rush to update their policies on free speech and protests I think this is definitely a wake of call for universities that perhaps not may not have had to enforce their protest policies to an extent that they had to do the last couple months other us College administrations have agreed to negotiate with students at recker's University this resulted in the school agreeing to add an Arab Cultural Center as well as to other concessions in exchange for the voluntary dismantling of the protesters encampment this is obviously a very hot button political issue and I think students just want to be heard so giving a students a seat at the table allowing them to have a say in what happen I think that's a great idea many students have called for universities to divest from Israeli businesses whose interests are tied to the war in Gaza not an easy task experts say divestment becomes more complicated simply because of the way that um funds are invested it's even spread as far as you know Apple and Google who have business in in that part of the Middle East I think 90% of the S&P companies are involved in some kind of you know um U business so how do you how do you really uh break that out but student concerns shouldn't be dismissed either she says and universities should be transparent about their actions sharing what we're doing and helping students and others understand what it is that we're doing and most importantly why we're doing what we're doing and why we're making the decision that we're making the University of Southern California has also canell its commencement ceremony at the University of Michigan protesters briefly disrupted commencement Services there student protests may have a story history on college campuses but it seems there are still lessons to be learned about how to handle demonstrations in a way that all sides can support Tina Trin VA news New York

Channel: Voice of America

Views: 2,186

Keywords: Columbia University, Gaza, Israel-Hamas war, pro-palestinan demonstrations

Id: Xp-bvcSHakk

Length: 2min 57sec (177 seconds)

Published: Wed May 08 2024