We Will Not Concede: Occupy Tabaret uOttawa Student Encampment Update from INSAFuOttawa

We are here day and night on Tabaret lawn with a clear goal in mind. We will not waste our time opening up dialogue with administration after clearly re-iterating, what our demands are.

Since October of last year, we organized protests and walkouts to demand divestment. In response, the university set up meetings with the head of EDI and the head of student affairs to try and appease us, as if Palestine is merely a diversity and inclusion issue.

We will not be silenced with fruitless meetings that yield no concrete results.

On May 7th, after 14 days of repeatedly reaching out to the university and asking to meet, Awad Ibrahim, the head of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusive Excellence and Eric Bercier, Associate Vice-President of Student Affairs met with us to discuss what they call their “expectations” before a formal meeting can be set up with themselves and a member of the administration.

Most notably, the requested concessions are:

To stop using washable chalk on the premises
To limit the encampment to only 50% of the lawn

Let us be clear, they condescendingly framed "the start of a dialogue" in bureaucratic and institutional jargon we all know is meant to stall and lose focus of why we are here.

They insist we concede to several of the administration’s demands before even offering us a meeting. We have the right to meet with our University as students paying thousands of dollars in tuition!

They state "it's a matter of people being faithful to what they said" as if uOttawa displayed an ounce of integrity throughout this entire process.

The sharp contrast between the urgency of our demands and the dismissive attitude we received from Awad and Eric is infuriating.

For nearly an hour they yammered about working together diplomatically and in good faith while simultaneously refusing to listen to our demands, ignoring the core issues and giving us ultimatums.

They concluded this ridiculous meeting, by insisting we keep the contents of the meeting private and that we do not publicize our discussion. This is yet another cowardly and feeble attempt to suppress our voices as students of the University of Ottawa while concealing their communication with us and you.

It is clear that the university has lost any semblance of control and they believe that by bluffing and dangling empty promises and threats in front of us that we will bow down to their every ask.

We do not have the luxury of time! While Palestinians are forcefully displaced and massacred the University of Ottawa administration finds it appropriate to start policing students and stalling the negotiation process. This is all while the money they invest in companies complicit in Israeli apartheid, occupation and genocide directly, bankroll the violence and horrors unfolding in Gaza.

While the university administration is comfortable with funding and endorsing at genocide, we are not, especially at this crucial time.

Shame on them.

We have sent a response to the university regarding their demands to begin discussion and we will wait to hear back from them today.

In the meantime, we want everyone to be aware of the situation and informed in preparation for the next stage of our encampment in support of our family in Gaza.

So please stay tuned for updates from InsafuOttawa

Until liberation and return.

Our demands:

• Disclosure of all the university’s direct and indirect investments
• Complete divestment from any and all corporations involved in the surveillance, occupation, and murder of Palestinians both in Gaza and the West Bank.
• Termination of all relationships with academic zionist institutions.

Update:

On Friday, May 10, we received an email from the uOttawa administration accepting our repeated calls for a meeting. We will be meeting with the secretary general, Annick Bergeron, and the chief investment officer, Francois Dionne. As we have continuously reiterated, our focus will remain on the genocide in Gaza and we expect that the university responds to our demands for divestments promptly.

We have agreed to meet on May 13.