A group of 10 students at Occidental College launched a hunger strike on Monday, in protest of the college’s “failure to protect its most vulnerable students and its refusal to divest Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza,” according to a joint Instagram post from Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Occidental College and Occidental College Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the organizations leading the strike.
The student protesters have not specified how long the hunger strike will go on, though organizer Tobias Lodish said they are prepared to strike “until our demands are met.”
“This hunger strike is the only way to make our voices heard,” Lodish said. “We have exhausted every avenue to negotiate with the administrators at our college.”
According to Lodish, Occidental’s strike follows Chapman University’s SJP hunger strike last week. According to Chapman protesters, the movement is in solidarity with the “millions of Palestinians who are currently being denied food, water, and shelter.”
“Through this hunger strike, we’re hoping to get protections for international students with repressive policies and, as usual, divest from the ongoing genocide,” Jackie Hu, an organizer and member of Occidental SJP, said.
Hu noted that as of Wednesday, they have received no response from administration.
Occidental College officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Occidental’s strike follows protests from universities around the nation in the past two years. In 2024, students at Columbia, Yale, Brown and Princeton all called for administration to divest from Israel.
None of these protests led to meaningful change, although referendums were passed as a result of them.
In April 2024, Columbia’s student government passed one to divest from Israel, which was supported by 76% of students. But the university did not follow.
Brown’s board also voted not to divest despite intense student backlash, as did Princeton’s resource committee. Yale’s student government passed a referendum, but the board has not announced a final decision on divestment.
In the spring of 2024, USC’s Divest from Death coalition led months of protests against the war in Gaza. Similar to the other universities, there has not been any action toward divesting from Israel.
According to an Instagram post from the USC’s SJP chapter, the group will be holding a protest at the USC Village McClintock Entrance on Friday, April 25 at 6 p.m.