The University of Melbourne (UoM) is threatening 21 students with expulsion for taking part in the Palestine solidarity encampment and holding a sit-in at Mahmoud’s Hall — renamed from Arts West to honour 25-year-old Palestinian Mahmoud Alnaouq who wanted to study international relations at UoM. He was killed by an Israeli airstrike last October.
University management has also been found to have potentially breached privacy laws by tracking students, using WiFi and surveillance cameras
Isaac Nellist spoke to Reham Elzeiny, from UniMelb for Palestine, about management’s threats.
Please describe the Palestine solidarity encampment at UoM and the sit-in at Mahmoud’s Hall. What have you won?
We started the solidarity encampment on April 25 on the South Lawn. It was in place for about three weeks and, in that time, we saw a huge amount of growth and support.
The community really got behind us. We had teach-ins and food being brought by the community and it became a really beautiful activist space.
The goal of the encampment was to pressure the university to cut ties with weapons manufacturers, particularly those involved in the genocide in Gaza.
After three weeks, we held a rally, and an autonomous group of students decided to start a sit-in at the Arts West building, which we renamed Mahmoud’s Hall.
That lasted about a week: people had tents and marquees inside the foyer and open spaces on the ground floor.
When we were on the lawn, we had not received much of a response from the university. So the sit-in was a way of drawing more attention to our protest and letting the university know that we were serious.
During the sit-in, we had ongoing negotiations with the university and, by the end of the week, we agreed to [their offer of] disclosure.
This meant the university agreed to disclose all of its ties to weapons manufacturers, particularly research collaborations and partnership, in exchange for us packing down the sit-in and leaving the building.
The university began disclosing its ties with weapons manufacturers and the United States Department of Defence on June 30.
This was a major win and definitely step one of a few.
Our ultimate goal is to get the university to divest from those companies, but we need to know the extent of their involvement.
The university has threatened 21 students with expulsion and other disciplinary measures. What are these and how have students responded?
The penalties range from a caution, all the way through to suspension and termination, and quite a few in the middle that affect our enrolment.
We were quite surprised by how heavy-handed the university has been, particularly since we were in ongoing negotiations and we came to a mutual agreement.
It seems like the university is using these misconduct notices to punish students for getting it to agree to disclosure — quite a strange thing to do.
While 21 students have been issued misconduct notices, at any one time in the building there were between 70–100 people. So they have selected people to make an example of and deter others from doing the same thing.
Students have been surprised and not surprised at the same time.
We’ve been surprised by the methods and the way it has come about, but not surprised, too, in that we knew the university was not happy with us being there.
We held a rally on the first day of the hearing on July 10, and received a lot of community support. Now we are just trying to advocate the best we can.
Could you talk about the surveillance of students by the university?
When we received the notices, we got a few documents attached to an email and one of those had CCTV footage stills of each of us, as well as the WiFi tracking location.
So they have taken stills from CCTV and identified exactly where particular students have been, at what time, in which building and at what level, using WiFi pings. We were really surprised they did that to identify particular students.
Security guards were placed at the entrances of the building, for a period of time, who were taking people’s identification. So the university already had identified people, who had willingly given their details.
It’s pretty shocking because, in 2016, when the university adopted its new WiFi network, it said it were just using the WiFi to identify “dots on a page” and to identify traffic. It said it was not breaching privacy because it could not identify students.
Obviously the university has lied, because you can see the location is directly attached to a student ID.
We didn’t expect the university to go to those lengths. But it has, opening up a whole new conversation about the way universities are using student data.
People are now really hesitant to connect to the university WiFi.
One of the 21 students threatened with misconduct is from Palestine and has had a really hard time grappling with it. She left Palestine, a highly surveilled occupation state, and now the same technology is being used on her when she protests to get the university to divest from companies involved in the killing her own people.
We don’t know what technology is being used or which companies are involved. It would be ironic if the companies are the same we are trying to get them to divest from.
This is taking place in a broader context of universities cracking down on activism across the country. What are your thoughts on this intensified repression?
It’s quite shocking. When you boil it down, these protests are being used to try and enact policy change in universities.
Ultimately we want an ethical policy where our university does not work with weapons companies.
We have tried every single method: we have emailed, called, tried to meet with the university and management has not responded. This is what leads to protests; people need to take further measures.
I would ask universities, if students are generally unhappy with a policy and they have taken all measures to communicate this and management still ignores them, what does it expect students to do?
If they respond with restrictions on protests, what does that say about freedom of expression and freedom of assembly?
Universities are not creating any space for robust dialogue and conversation. We are seeing more universities operating like corporations. We need to be able to have a voice to express what changes we want.
At the end of the day, the crackdowns will make students want to fight harder to achieve their goals.
How can others support the campaign?
Semester two is about to start and we have all been left hanging in limbo; we haven’t received any outcomes.
We are asking people to email the university and the Vice Chancellor and for organisations to put out a public statement to demand the university drops these misconduct allegations.
Public expressions of support help, particularly if you are an alumni or a donor to the university.
[Follow UniMelb for Palestine on Instagram for updates.]
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