This story is developing and will continue to be updated.
Members of the 'Gaza Solidarity Encampment' on College Green met with Interim Penn President Larry Jameson and Provost John Jackson Jr. on Saturday evening.
Organizers wrote in a statement that until the encampment's demands are met, they "will continue to occupy this space." The statement comes as the encampment enters its third evening — signaling that administrators are in dialogue with protesters despite demanding 24 hours ago that they disband their encampment. A request for comment was left with a University spokesperson.
The encampment's three main goals are the disclosure of University investments, financial divestment from Israel, and the defense of Palestinian students — including the reinstatement of Penn Students Against the Occupation of Palestine, which was deregistered last weekend.
"Listening to the voices of Palestinian organizers and allies means disclosing, divesting, and defending them," the statement read. "In contradiction with the University's notification on the supposed belonging of Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian students at Penn, a failure to meet these three demands demonstrates that this prior email was nothing but platitudes."
The group referred to their demands as the “bare minimum” — describing them as “the floor, not the ceiling." Organizers added that they walked administrators through their three demands during the meeting.
"We were disappointed to hear that administrators viewed our demands as unreasonable," the statement read. "This indicates a failure on the part of University leadership to understand why we have established our encampment."
Jameson and Jackson claimed "financial transparency is bad business sense," according to the statement, and compared the administration's treatment of protesters' demands to peer institutions like Columbia University.
"[P]eer institutions are far less ambiguous with their endowments allowing our comrades at Columbia’s encampment to formulate more targeted divestment demands," the statement read. "For Penn, good business sense is supporting genocide."
Administrators also told organizers present at the meeting that non-Penn affiliates at the encampment posed a "safety risk," the statement also alleged.
"This is incredibly similar to the inherently racist and classist rhetoric parroted by Yale President Peter Salovey that demonized the New Haven community supporting Occupy Beinecke," the statement read, referring to Yale's handling of its own encampment.
The statement addressed counterprotesters.
"In reality, Zionist counter-protestors have been the ones harassing and threatening the safety of our encampment," it read.
The encampment continues to remain intact despite a demand from Jameson yesterday that it disband 'immediately.'
"While administrations want to remind us that the end of the school year brings much to celebrate, students in Gaza don’t have access to food, water, shelter, and education," the statement read.
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