Miles Berry

Eight students who were part of last week’s Bowdoin Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) Smith Union encampment are under temporary suspension “pending a disciplinary process.” Approximately 50 students in total are facing punishments for their involvement in the demonstration.

The encampment ended on Monday, February 10 at around 6 p.m. following a dialogue between SJP and administration that ended in an agreement between the two parties.

In an email to the Orient, Senior Vice President and Dean for Student Affairs Jim Hoppe elaborated on the factors that influenced the College’s closure of Smith during the encampment.

“[The encampment] conflicted with our guidelines for using the space and would have interfered with other events scheduled for the coming week. We also had to think about the staff working in Smith Union and whether they could feasibly do their job with the encampment in place,” he wrote. “From what we learned from similar situations at other campuses last spring, we saw that when non-community members joined encampments, it changed the nature of those activities and made it much harder to keep things safe and manageable.”

Hoppe acknowledged an “understanding” between the College and protesting students that may have facilitated the encampment’s closure.

“The understanding was that the administration would acknowledge certain facts about the situation—including that the interactions between the students involved in the encampment and the administration included respectful dialogue; that the students left voluntarily; and that the College made the decision to close the union,” Hoppe wrote.

The complete details of the final terms reached between the SJP protesters and the administration remain unclear. However, according to protesters familiar with the negotiations, conversations between the two groups on Monday centered around the disciplinary process for students in the encampment, the College’s responsibility for shutting down Smith Union and discussions about violations of Title VI policies.

The students who left the encampment on Monday under this agreement will still face the formal disciplinary process. Hoppe declined to comment on how the disciplinary processes will proceed.

In an email to the Orient, Associate Dean for Community Standards Jimmy Riley expressed that he could not answer questions about what the disciplinary process will look like for suspended students or the different sanctions faced by students who participated in different capacities. He noted that the “temporary suspensions” implemented are “pending a disciplinary process.”

With Smith Union reopened, over 50 students currently face disciplinary processes. Eight students are facing temporary suspension and have been barred from campus services and housing, according to SJP.

In her email to the College on Monday night, Zaki noted her respect for Bowdoin’s history of student activism but maintained that the encampment violated “policies governing building use and student behavior,” prompting the College’s disciplinary response.

“These rules are not symbolic. They are designed to ensure that members of the community can feel welcome and safe in every space on campus and have fair access to those spaces,” Zaki wrote.