Courtesy of The Bowdoin Orient

In May 1986, as Bowdoin prepared for its 180th Commencement, a cardboard and scrap wood structure stood on the Main Quad.

Members of Students for Action Against Apartheid occupied what they called the “shanty” on the quad to push for the College’s divestment from the South African Apartheid state, responding to a vote by the Subcommittee on Social Responsibility against “total and immediate divestment.”

President A. LeRoy Greason met often with student protesters inside and outside the shanty. In a speech in June 1986, Greason reflected on what he saw as a courageous protest, one which stood alongside actions by students across the nation who built campus shanties in pressuring their administrations to divest.

“And what does this particular college president do? I let the shanty stand,” Greason said. “After all, the shanty is a statement about one of the major wrongs of our day, and to speak with a shanty has won acceptability on our nation’s campuses because of the magnitude of the wrong and because of the broad tolerance that ought to characterize a college community.”

For 96 hours last weekend, protestors with Bowdoin Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) occupied Smith Union and called upon the College to honor the “Bowdoin Solidarity Referendum,” which was passed in the spring of 2024. The referendum calls for an institutional statement condemning scholasticide in Gaza and for a commitment to halt future investment in defense funds, among other aims.

Long before this weekend, for the past half-century, encampments and occupations have been a prominent part of student activism at the College, particularly as they regard the investment of the endowment. Much of the College’s documentary history of student encampments is held at Special Collections & Archives, where club flyers, administrative communications and news clippings paint a picture of a strong culture of student activism.

In one instance in 2015, members of Bowdoin Climate Action (BCA) organized a “climate camp” on the quad in an action pushing for divestment from the fossil fuel industry. When informed by Bowdoin Student Government (BSG) that students must dismantle the tents, “BCA agreed to lose its status as a chartered student organization in order to prolong the protest,” the Orient reported.

The following month, two dozen Bowdoin students organized with BCA for a “sit-in” in the hallway of the Office of the President. At 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, April 1, students brought sleeping bags and food supplies into the office, signaling their intent to occupy the space until their divestment demands were taken seriously. President Barry Mills met with the protesters on the evening of Friday, April 3, to discuss with protesters his views on divestment as a “symbolic tactic.”

After three days, BCA’s sit-in ended. In discussions with Mills and with academic deans, BCA protesters recalled disagreements over divestment but “sympath[y] towards the sit-in” from the administration. Protesters involved with the “climate camp” and the sit-in did not face substantial disciplinary action from the College.

When asked about the significance of materials on protests against South African Apartheid, Kat Stefko, director of Special Collections & Archives, reflected on the importance of the College’s archives as a source of institutional memory.

“The simplest answer is that facts matter. Records preserve first-hand evidential information about what happened, when and why. Records often complicate the published [secondary source] historical narratives that we’ve come to accept as truths. It is not uncommon to find multiple perspectives preserved in the archives that tell nuanced and sometimes conflicting stories about what happened. There are also archival absences, records that were not preserved or that never existed, and that too can tell us much,” Stefko wrote in an email to the Orient.

President Safa Zaki’s email to the campus community on Monday shared the notion of protest as a critical part of Bowdoin’s past.

“As I said in my note this morning, student activism at Bowdoin has a long and admirable history, and it is crucial that our students feel empowered to fight for what they feel is right,” Zaki said. “However, we require that this activism abides by our policies governing building use and student behavior. These rules are not symbolic.”

On Monday morning, the students remaining in SJP’s encampment received letters notifying them of their suspension. Still more students had received notice that they were “on probation” over the weekend. At the close of the encampment, protesters and the College agreed to a “good-faith” resolution to the action. The College did not expressly agree to negotiate with students over any of the demands of the Bowdoin Solidarity Referendum.

In the Bowdoin Solidarity Referendum and through other speeches and actions, SJP has recalled the fight for divestment from South Africa. The social responsibility committee called for in the referendum was last active in 1987, the time of the College’s divestment from South Africa.

Professor of History David Gordon has studied the internal politics of South African Apartheid extensively. He reflected that divestment was a long process and was ultimately but one of many factors that contributed to the end of Apartheid.

“When you talk about sanctions, divestment, boycotts, those all played a different role…. I want to emphasize it was the unity of this divestment project in the U.S. that made this change useful,” Gordon said. “By the second half of the 1980s, the idea that Apartheid had to end was really the dominant one.”

After repeated student votes overwhelmingly in favor of divestment from Apartheid, the College began a process of “selective divestiture” in 1985. At a faculty meeting in May of that year, one professor raised a measure calling for a new investment policy.

“Every American dollar is a brick in the wall of Apartheid,” the measure read.

Bowdoin reached full divestment from South Africa after students pressured the College during the 1986 shanty protest. More than 50 colleges and universities in the United States had already divested by that point.

Since the 2015 BCA sit-in, the College has worked toward achieving carbon neutrality and lessening the endowment’s exposure to “fossil fuel-focused funds” to below 2 percent of the endowment’s value. Around 250 U.S. colleges and universities had divested from the fossil fuel industry as of a 2023 report by The Guardian.

When students constructed the shanty in 1986, Bowdoin’s endowment and investment in other portfolios measured around $116 million. As of 2024, the endowment measured $2.6 billion. Zaki’s message to the Bowdoin community in May, responding to the passage of the Bowdoin Solidarity Referendum, noted a concern that withdrawing future investments from defense funds might “have significant adverse effects on endowment returns.” Students, faculty and staff continue debating the likelihood and impact of such effects.

Stefko noted that, beyond quad encampments and the occupation of buildings, the library’s archives reflect student protests as influential in challenging the administration and bringing about institutional change, a belief strongly held by Greason in his statements from 1986.

“A college, by its nature, must be a forum,” Greason said. “In a broader sense, we must be ever mindful of the claims of others and their right to be heard—and our need to hear them.”