Smith Students for Justice in Palestine (SSJP) hosted the People’s Picnic on Chapin Lawn on Friday, April 17, at 3 p.m. to discuss the demands presented in their Ethical Investment Policy Proposal petition and the Smith Advisory Committee for Investor Responsibility’s (ACIR) decision to sidestep meaningful consideration of the proposal.
The petition SSJP submitted to the ACIR outlined a plan to divest from weapons manufacturers and companies with active business in countries found to be violating human rights by the International Criminal Court. SSJP called for increased transparency about what companies the college invests in. The People’s Picnic later evolved into the People’s University, a space to facilitate further discussions, workshops and community building around student organizing.
This development came in response to the ACIR’s meeting on Thursday, April 16, during which SSJP’s proposal was discussed. The ACIR informed SSJP that they did not vote on the proposal and that they do not have a timeline for doing so.
With tarps spread out on the grass in front of a tree for students attending to sit in groups. Organizers shared the updates from the ACIR, because this year, the proposal was at the center of SSJP’s organizing efforts, and if rejected it cannot be resubmitted for another two years.
One organizer, who requested anonymity due to concerns about academic and institutional repercussions, said, “I think Smith’s admin is very removed from its students, which we’re trying to combat with the People’s University. We are the university.”
The People’s University is trying to reimagine educational space through student-led teach-ins and community collaboration. “Rather than this hierarchy of admin and students, where they don’t talk to us at all and are very dismissive of what the students actually want,” the student added.
At the Picnic, SSJP provided a zine on the history of student organizing at Smith, including past divestment campaigns. These included the apartheid sit-in in College Hall in 1986, which demanded that Smith divest from businesses in South Africa and the 2012 fossil fuel divestment campaign. SSJP used the successes of these past divestment campaigns to transition towards explaining their own goals.
SSJP’s current demands are broken down into three categories: ACIR reforms, academic environment and school functioning. These categories include specific steps such as the ACIR ending the two-year time restriction on proposal submissions and implementing an open meeting each semester so that Smith students and faculty may participate directly with the ACIR.
For the college’s academic environment, SSJP demands a required course on race, which Smith students have been advocating for since 1968, as well as a Genocide Lecture Series modeled after Mount Holyoke’s where invited scholars share their work on genocide with the Smith community.
The People’s University expanded from this Picnic, with SSJP adding tents, signs and fabric blockages on Chapin Lawn. “The People’s University is a way to reclaim the democracy of our institution that Smith has promised, but failed to fulfill. It’s a space to build community and … have political education,” an organizer said.
SSJP is having workshops, teach-ins and art builds inside the space for participants to be “students of the world on our terms, rather than the way that Smith tries to superficially.”
Before the People’s University, an SSJP organizer recalled events such as February’s rally, saying “We’ve tried every other option and we’ve been shot down every single time. It gets to a point where you feel the only thing you can do is sacrifice your comfort and risk your academic security just to have an inch of leverage … I think being able to choose to participate in this kind of action is a deep privilege. Obviously, it’s not one that I take lightly because of the consequences.”
Despite possible repercussions, SSJP wants the People’s University to send a message to the Smith administration about communication and engagement with the students, faculty and staff of Smith. SSJP feels that since the administration is not involved directly with students, the People’s University should serve as a space that invites students to get involved in learning with each other.
A non-organizer participating in the People’s University said that “it’s been really nice to exist in an alternative education space. I like that it’s very democratic and non-hierarchical,” but they’re hoping this organizing will provoke more long-term impacts. “I think that this is a great jumping off point into more escalatory action … and hopefully force [Smith] to divest.”
The Director of Media Relations for the college, Carolyn McDaniel, said in a statement that “Civil discourse and a willingness to listen to others’ perspectives are necessary to foster understanding and address disagreements on a college campus. Any student at Smith College is free to express opinions and ideas and support causes in ways that do not disrupt the regular, orderly and essential operations of the institution.” McDaniel also referenced several college policies in her statement, including the Policy Governing Time and Place and Manner of Expressive Activity.
The Policy Governing Time and Place and Manner of Expressive Activity has been particularly controversial since its rollout in Fall 2024. After the draft policy was circulated through student channels like the Smith Confessional, a formal document with student feedback against the policy eventually garnered signatures of over 170 current students, student organizations and alumni. Many viewed the policy as direct retaliation by the college regarding SSJP’s organization of a multi-day sit-in of College Hall in March 2024, following a different sit-in protest in November 2023.
Professor Erin Pineda, a professor in the government department, said that she and fellow faculty members sympathized with some of SSJP’s concerns. “Beyond the specific claim about divesting from war making in particular, I think there’s a broader set of concerns and questions around financial transparency around what it means to be a good steward of the endowment and therefore of the institution,” said Pineda.
Pineda connected the People’s University to previous protests on Smith campus. The “People’s University is … not just making a claim about the institution doing something differently in terms of investment. They’re also making a set of claims about pushing the community as a whole to think about what else a college can be,” Pineda said.
Pineda also discussed her personal thoughts on the People’s University. “I see student activism of this kind as part of the work of college. I don’t think it’s different or separate from the more formalized work that we do in the classroom,” she said. “For me, when I see things like the People’s University, it makes me feel proud to be a university worker. It reminds me what a kind of special place higher education can be.”
An SSJP organizer said that ultimately, “We want our demands met. We want it in writing that the Board of Trustees will work with us to get our demands met. We’re not expecting the Board to come to us one day and be like, ‘okay, we’ll meet your demands.’ We want to have a conversation.”
As for when that will happen, “We know that our journey towards divestment is going to be long … It’s going to take multiple years and multiple generations of students, which is unfortunate, but that’s just how these things go. It was the same with fossil fuels. It was the same with South African apartheid. And we’re prepared to play the long game, but to do that, we need to have integrity from the institution to communicate with us.”
