At Bowdoin College’s board of trustees meeting Friday, students sat silently to protest the college’s handling of a resolution students voted in May to demand that the school take a stand against the war in Gaza.

Bowdoin’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) spearheaded the May referendum calling on the college to divest from defense-focused funds, publicly disclose direct and indirect investments in manufacturing arms and establish a committee to oversee socially responsible investments.

The referendum passed overwhelmingly after being voted on by nearly 70 percent of students, but the university has not responded to requests for divestment or disclosure or issued an institutional statement.

On Friday, student protesters lined up outside the meeting entrance, carrying “honor the referendum” signs as administrators passed. Several students worked together to display a long list of names of Palestinians killed during the Israeli invasion of Gaza, where more than 40,000 civilians were killed.

In September, Bowdoin College President Safa Zaki announcement an ad hoc commission on investments and accountability (ACIR) in response to the referendum. Comprised of trustees, faculty, trustees and students, the referendum is designed to make general investment strategy recommendations to the Board of Trustees, which oversees the college’s investment policy.

“Rather than asking them to take a position on a particular issue, I invited the committee to focus on developing a set of considerations and principles that we can turn to when analyzing the issues that emerge at the intersection of the College’s mission and its investment practices. », Zaki wrote to the members of the college on September 5.

Organizer and Bowdoin senior Olivia Kenney expressed disappointment in Zaki’s decision to form the committee in response to the referendum, saying it fell short of the measures students voted on in the spring.

“What Bowdoin repeats in its rhetoric is its commitment to the ‘common good,’ and we have seen by its dismissive response to our referendum, including now with this committee…that their commitment seems hollow to us,” he said. Kenney said. Record time after the demonstration.

In the days leading up to the sit-in, the committee held “listening sessions” that offered students and College employees the chance to interact directly with committee members.

Kenney and fellow organizer Marc Rosenthal attended these sessions and were frustrated by what they identified as a lack of transparency from the committee. According to Rosenthal, committee members present at his session often answered questions indirectly, if at all.

“As these listening sessions continued, we began to realize that this was ultimately a distraction tactic (and) a way to delay the establishment of a real change,” he said.

The college has not yet responded to requests for comment.

Friday’s protest is the latest of many public actions by Bowdoin’s SJP. In Decemberstudent protesters marched to Senator Angus King’s residence in Brunswick to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. At May’s commencement ceremony, several students held signs calling for divestment, disclosure and an end to scholasticide in Gaza as they crossed the stage to receive their diplomas. Scholasticide is the term for an effort to destroy education in a specific location.

Rosenthal hopes the sit-in will encourage the board to change its investment strategies to meet the referendum’s demands.

“This action was a way for us to interact directly with the board, see their faces as they walked by and get them to take up this issue,” he said.

Emma Kilbride is editor of the Bowdoin Orient, the student newspaper of Bowdoin College.

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