As faculty pressure mounted, some suspended students will now be allowed to be involved in their graduation ceremonies, one development this week amid days of turmoil on USC’s campus.
At least 29 students have received letters of interim suspension for their involvement in the protest encampment in solidarity with Gaza, as of Thursday evening. That includes at least four evictions from student housing.
President Carol Folt told faculty in the academic senate meeting Wednesday that the appeals process would be expedited so that suspended students can be involved in graduation events. Initially, they were banned from campus, including all commencement events.
Students and faculty expressed outrage, and members of the encampment said during negotiations on April 30 and May 1, President Folt promised not to administer academic sanctions on protesters.
In a clip of a recording of one of those meetings released to Annenberg Media, there is an exchange between Folt and student negotiators. It begins with Folt speaking.
“If you’re seniors, and you are planning to go to graduation, something really important to me is that you’re able to complete your program and go to graduation,” Folt said. “So I just want to say that.”
Students are heard asking if that is a threat to them graduating. “We don’t appreciate the veiled threats,” one said.
Folt is heard trying to reassure them she meant that they could be provided academic accommodations. “I have had many years of experience in universities. And when students get involved in things, sometimes they are unable to or they feel they can’t take the test,” Folt said. “They’re feeling so pressured, they can’t do that is all I’m talking about.”
“I would never do that,” she said.
“Well we don’t know that,” one student said.
“Well I’m telling you, now you know. I never have, never would,” Folt said. “If you need help … we try to offer that to everybody at this moment. It’s not anything about a threat.”
This week, two of the four student negotiators were among those issued interim suspensions, according to Jody Armour, Roy P. Crocker professor of law, who was present for both days of negotiations.
“Students detrimentally relied on her assurances that they didn’t have to worry about suffering disciplinary actions,” Armour told Annenberg Media by text on Thursday. “So in fairness, there should be a kind of estoppel principle at play that prevents the university, through the president, from making representations that students rely on. And then pulling the rug out from under them after they’ve been lulled into a false sense of security.”
The estoppel principle is a legal principle that prevents one from asserting a claim that contradicts what one has said or done before.
Armour also pointed out that Folt in recent days repeated to faculty that she could not intervene in the disciplinary process. “She was representing here that she could determine the nature and scope of disciplinary actions independent of the disciplinary process,” he said.
USC’s public relations department has not responded to requests for comment by Annenberg Media. In a long FAQ posted on Monday, the administration listed violations they say were a direct result of the encampment, including vandalism, stealing university property, noise disruption during exams and “harassment and violence towards DPS officers and other students.”
Earlier this week, a coalition of USC faculty from across ranks and departments staged a rally and sit-in in front of USC administrator’s offices at Bovard Auditorium demanding all disciplinary actions be dropped, and strongly condemning the response to peaceful protests for the people of Gaza.
In an open letter to the administration, the coalition of faculty demanded “immediate and full amnesty for all students arrested, suspended or who were served other disciplinary notices.” They called for restoring students’ access to campus and participation in finals, events and graduation.
The faculty also called into question the process of disciplinary action. “No evidence was provided within these notices (of suspension) to justify any alleged offenses of conduct, and no clarity was provided as to disciplinary procedures of timelines,” the letter said. “This interim suspension process involves no meaningful faculty oversight or input and is deployed in a selective and inconsistent manner.”
A group of faculty members went inside to meet with Folt and Guzman. Following the meeting Tuesday, members of the negotiating team said the conversation focused on the process for interim suspension. “We brought up the issue really around the discrepancy of how these sanctions against these students came about,” said an associate professor and member of the negotiation team, who declined to be identified. “And we tried to get clarity from the administration in terms of how these types of sanctions are levied against students across the university.”
“We really emphasized as much as we could about the reason why these students were placed into the sanction was because of university actions,” the professor said.
In the letter, faculty emphasized that Folt, Provost Andrew Guzman and the administration were referencing alleged reports of violence and harassment from the encampment without providing evidence. “Folt’s missive to the community after clearing the encampment was filled with falsehoods and vague language meant to demonize students’ nonviolent protest,” the letter said. “These mischaracterizations and blatant lies were also used to justify the LAPD incursion onto campus, despite promises not to bring them in except under extreme and volatile circumstances, which had not occurred.”
“That might be an area that we need to agree to disagree on,” the member of the negotiating team said. “That we have our experience of the encampment, and not seeing any violence. And then their claim is that they have complaints of violence that have not been fully gone through the process. They’re in this interim process of being figured out.”
The letter describes how the LAPD encampment eviction also treated students in an “arbitrary and uneven manner, i.e. not all students in the area had their IDs scanned,” they said. “Medics, journalists and legal observers who were not part of the encampment were also harassed, some kettled by DPS and the LAPD while student journalists were shunted off to a distant area that prevented them from documenting events, as noted in their reporting for Annenberg Media and the Daily Trojan. Students also appear to have been racially profiled throughout after the sweep.”
On Thursday, members of the academic senate voted 21-7 to censure Folt and Guzman citing “widespread dissatisfaction and concern” among faculty around handling of recent events. They also voted to create a task force to conduct an investigation of “campus events over the last several months related to the conflict in the Middle East,” and produce a public report of its findings by September 15.