With the ongoing Israel-Hamas war entering its sixth month, graduate students will likely get the chance to vote on a referendum to prohibit the use of Graduate Student Activity Fee (GSAF) funds to purchase products from certain corporations that have ties to Israel, according to GSGA President Neeti Patel (24PH). The GSAF is used to fund all graduate student organizations at Emory University.
Patel anticipates that students will be able to vote on the referendum early next week, according to an email she sent to the graduate student body.
“We anticipate this will delay the vote by approximately one week, but nevertheless believe every student should have a voice in how their graduate student activity fees are spent and are committed to processing all legislation in a way that upholds the democratic process,” Patel wrote in an email to the graduate student body. “All students will be notified of the voting period and provided a copy of the referendum at a minimum of 48 hours before voting opens.”
Patel initially hoped that the referendum would be included on the GSGA election ballot, which opened on April 1. However, student vote on the referendum was delayed after the Student Involvement, Leadership, and Transitions (SILT) office declined to place it on the ballot because “GSGA processes and bylaws had not been followed,” according to Assistant Vice President of University Communications Laura Diamond.
Diamond did not specify which processes and bylaws were violated when The Emory Wheel requested information from SILT, who forwarded the request to Diamond.
On April 1, Emory Stop Cop City members organized a protest in the Emory Student Center over SILT’s denial of the referendum. Elijah Brawner (26T), who attended the rally, said roughly 13 to 15 students held signs and chanted outside a room where Patel was meeting with SILT officials over Zoom.
“We still believe that that referendum is winnable,” Brawner said. “I’m obviously sympathetic to one side of it. … Our opponents still believe that referendum’s loseable. So it's still a very up in the air issue.”
Brawner co-authored a bill, which is titled “Boycott and Divestment from Israel and Corporations Complicit in the Ongoing Genocide in Palestine.” He said he designed the bill to be a “very limited” version of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which urges Israel to cease its occupation of Palestinian territories by rallying international pressure. This includes boycotting some companies with ties to Israel.
Under the bill, groups would not be able to use GSAF funding to support some of the companies on the BDS list, including Microsoft, Domino’s Pizza, Papa Johns Pizza, Ford Motor Company, Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.
The bill stated that it would create a Graduate Finance Committee (GFC) to enforce the policy by conducting a semesterly review of student organizations’ finances to ensure that there are no financial engagements with prohibited companies. GSGA would freeze student organizations’ funds for the rest of the fiscal year if they violate the bill’s terms. The organizations would not have access to funds for the next fiscal year unless they undergo a probationary period. The group would, however, have an option to dispute the findings before the GFC made a final decision regarding the violation.
John Kirkpatrick (24L) said that the economic measures in the bill were “incredibly invasive.”
He added that the bill could fuel division within Emory’s graduate student body.
“It inherently targets anyone who is from Israel, anyone who supports Israel, people who are Jewish,” Kirkpatrick said. “It inherently calls them out as being wrong and bad, which I don’t think is fair because, like I said, this is a very divisive issue.”
Kirkpatrick was also worried about the proposal’s end date. The bill states the resolution will be in effect until Emory fully divests from Israel and the United Nations officially recognizes that the “Palestinian territories of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Syrian Golan heights are no longer occupied by Israel.”
Benjamin Williams (24M) said student pressure on the Israeli government is “really important,” adding that he believes the GSGA is justified in enacting policy regarding the Israel-Hamas war.
“Graduate student organizations have always taken political positions, and this would not be a departure from that,” Williams said.
