In a joint session on Tuesday, Sept. 10, Chancellor Andrew Martin addressed Student Union Senate and Treasury in a rare Q&A, expressing gratitude to the student leaders and fielding questions regarding campus protests, encampments, and concerns with Title IX policies from various Senators. 

Student Union (SU) Senate passed a resolution calling for WashU to drop suspension cases against students and faculty, disarm the WashU Police Department, and create an Indigenous Studies department, Sept. 10. The resolution, which passed 11-7 with two abstentions, also called for Chancellor Andrew Martin to resign from his post. On the morning of Sept. 12, senior and SU President Hussein Amuri vetoed the resolution, saying that it would divide the student body. 

Six WashU faculty members —- four of whom were also arrested — were notified that they would be suspended with pay two days after their participation in the April 27 pro-Palestine protest on campus. All of the suspensions were lifted in late June, and most of the professors continue to teach at WashU. 

Several of the faculty members met with Student Life and detailed their suspension processes, provided updates on their employment status, and expressed their disappointment with how they were treated by the University. 

In the last year, university administrators nationwide have come under fire for their handling of campus protests. On Wednesday, Sep. 4, WashU Chancellor Andrew Martin shared his perspective. When asked a similar question that landed some of his colleagues in hot water — like university presidents at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University — Martin had a different answer.

We look forward to getting back to business, but not business as usual. After a 65-year-old man was nearly beaten to death by WUPD cops, after a hundred of us were violently arrested at a peaceful protest on our own front lawn, after the Board of Trustees has made clear it will not respect the will of student and faculty democracy, there can be no more business as usual.

New students: now that you are familiar with our recent past, it is up to you to decide our future. I cannot overstate how extraordinary that power is.

As I think about the current situation, I wonder if the students that Chancellor Martin is deriding and threatening will have the same reflection at their reunion weekends. Then I think, with the experience they are having, would they even come?

As we learn to advocate for our clients and communities, to further social justice, and to challenge institutional and systemic oppression, we find the Brown School’s silence on the genocide in Palestine fundamentally hypocritical and thoroughly in opposition to our institutional values.

A group of about 150 pro-Palestine protesters blocked off the intersection at Skinker Boulevard and Forest Park Parkway as part of a larger demonstration calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, May 3.  

To be “pro-Palestine,” one does not have to justify the horrific acts of terror that were committed on Oct. 7. To be “pro-Palestine,” one need not be anti-Israel. And being anti-Israel doesn’t make one effectively pro-Palestine.