Nineteen people were arrested Thursday after about 50 protesters, unhappy over UW Board of Regents investments they allege are connected to the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza, were forcibly removed from the Regents’ business committee meeting after disrupting proceedings.
Pro-Palestine protesters started outside the Gordon Commons dining hall around 7:45 a.m., later moving into the Regents meeting. For about the first 15 minutes of the meeting, the group stood silently along the walls. But then protest organizers began to interrupt the meeting, loudly alleging that the Regents were meeting in violation of the state’s open meeting laws and objecting to the board’s response to their demands to divest from companies they say are funding the conflict.
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The protesters included members of UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee’s chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and the UW-Madison chapter of Young Democratic Socialists of America, according to a statement posted on WisPolitics.
“Thursday’s action will challenge the Board of Regents’ complicity and refusal to align university investments with ethical standards,” the statement read. “Students and allies will continue building momentum for accountability and justice in the UW system. One of the most important stakeholders of the UW System, the students, want the Board of Regents to know that they are not welcome on their campuses as long as they continue to actively support a genocide and scholasticide.”
Protesters also objected to the recent response to an investigation aimed at ensuring the UW system was not investing in companies that “condone discrimination.” They were given a one-sentence response stating that the case was closed, an Instagram post from earlier this week said.
UW-Madison Dean of Students Christina Olstad attempted to intervene with the speakers, but they refused to leave. The Regents then paused the meeting as UW police officers pushed the protesters out of the board room; at least three people were either put in handcuffs or removed from the room through back rooms.
Chanting and yelling could still be heard from elsewhere in Gordon Commons 30 minutes after the initial disruption.
An Instagram post from UW-Milwaukee Popular University for Palestine and other protest groups said all detained students had been released as of 9:45 a.m. UW Police Department confirmed the 19 arrests in a statement released just before 11:30 a.m.
UW Police officers did not give out any citations, but did not rule out issuing them in the future based on investigations into each arrest case, the statement added.
UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee experienced days-long protests in late April and May earlier this year that included illegal encampments. The universities took different approaches to intervening in the protests, with UW-Madison attempting to remove the tents from Library Mall in early May; that effort backfired, with protesters promptly installing more tents than were there before.
Both encampments agreed to end their protests prior to UW-Madison’s and UW-Milwaukee’s spring commencements.