USC student activist groups hosted a Vigil for Palestine last Friday to honor the over 40,000 Palestinians killed since October 7.
Members from the USC Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation (SCALE), USC Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Divest from Death coalition hosted the event.
The vigil had large sheets of paper placed on the ground with several hundred names of what they called “martyred” Palestinians, accompanied by flyers containing images of those killed. Students placed lanterns and candles around the vigil to honor the lives lost.
“Every single name that is written on those pieces of paper was a Palestinian life that was violently taken,” a SCALE media liaison said. “I don’t even know how many names are on that list either. And those papers barely account for the number of people killed since October 7 or since 1948.”
Several people also wore keffiyehs and masks, which the liaison said was a precautionary measure for COVID concerns and safety reasons. The liaison, a USC student, requested anonymity out of fear of academic retaliation from the university.
“The university has been punishing a lot of students who are speaking out [about Gaza], and so we just want to protect ourselves by covering our faces,” the liaison said. “USC has clearly demonstrated that they are against any speech that doesn’t pertain to their own interests, and there are clear intimidation tactics being used against protesters.”
The Office of the President put out a statement at the start of the academic year to address changes made to rules and processes related to free speech.
“We expect you to follow the university’s rules and policies designed to support your rights and prevent disruption of university functions,” the statement read. “The university will continue to enforce these rules fairly, consistently, and expeditiously, acting quickly to protect campus health and safety.”
The student also said that organizers intended for the vigil to be a safe space to grieve while reestablishing their call for divestment and asking for a complete academic boycott of Israel by suspending study abroad programs. Attendees walked around the vigil and quietly read the names laid out on the ground.
Austen Cooper, a junior majoring in cinema and media studies and comparative literature, said that attending the vigil was important to him because it humanized the lives lost by seeing the victims as more than “just a statistic.”
“It’s important for everyone to learn the names and faces of people who have lost their lives so you see these martyrs as human beings and not just numbers,” Cooper said. “Learning these people’s stories will help you understand what’s going on better in Gaza and the West Bank.”
Community members also attended the vigil. Linda Baughn, an adjunct instructor at East Los Angeles College, said she came to ground herself after learning about the lives lost during the ongoing conflict.
“The scale of death is overwhelming and devastating, and it’s impossible to maintain one’s equilibrium when we’re living through a genocide,” Baughn said. “Sometimes you need to get together with other people and make some human connections just to make it out okay.”
Divest from Death members and attendees read aloud from poems and stories shared from Gaza. Refaat Alareer, a professor and editor of “Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine,” was killed by an Israeli airstrike in December according to CNN. Attendees shared excerpts of his work.
The media liaison from Divest from Death said that SCALE, SJP and the Divest from Death Coalition are planning to continue advocating for the university’s divestment from Israel well after the vigil.
“We cannot be ignored, and we will not be ignored,” the liaison said. “We want to remind the university that we are still calling for divestment and want them to at least acknowledge the genocide that is happening in Gaza.”
The Trousdale entrance to campus closed at 6 p.m. on Friday before the start of the vigil. Other entrances around campus remained open. A security ambassador initially told Annenberg Media that the Trousdale gates were set to reopen at 7 p.m., but they would not be accessible to students for another 45 minutes until the Divest from Death organizers had fully cleared the vigil.
DPS Assistant Chief David Carlisle said that this specific gate was intentionally closed during the vigil in order to “maintain the integrity of the campus perimeter.”
“If the demonstration were to draw a large crowd and that crowd decided to try and enter campus in mass, the guards at the gate could have been overwhelmed,” Carlisle said. “Fortunately, they were a modest-sized group that demonstrated peacefully outside of the campus.”
USC Hillel and Trojans for Israel also hosted a vigil on September 3 recognizing the deaths of six hostages held in captivity by Hamas. The IDF discovered their bodies on September 1.
Among the victims was American citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was taken hostage on October 7 from a music festival held in Southern Israel. Vigil attendees gathered to recite Kaddish to honor the Jewish lives lost.