A number of Boston University students announced four demands directed toward the BU administration and BU Hillel following a Jan. 28 incident in which they claim to have been removed from the Florence and Chafetz Hillel House due to “discrimination against [their] racial backgrounds,” according to a Wednesday release sent to The Daily Free Press.
The first demand requested a public apology from Hillel, BU President Robert Brown, BU Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore and BU Assistant Dean of Students and Executive Director of Student Activities John Battaglino.
The second demand asked for cultural sensitivity training for Hillel staff. The third requested the publication of any information that depicts a “financial or political” relationship between Hillel International, BU Hillel and the university. The final demand requested that the Hillel House be an available space for “all Boston University-wide functions.”
Elmore stated in an email that he “[had] been and will be communicating with the students involved,” and Battaglino also wrote in an email that he would prefer to speak directly with the students. Neither administrator had further comments.
Ibraheem Samirah, one of the BU students removed from the “All Students, All Israel” think tank, said the list of demands is not a result of just this one incident. Rather, he said similar incidents have occurred across the United States.
“This [discrimination] is something that’s been happening,” said Samirah, a second-year doctoral student in the Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine. “We are sending a message out that this is not OK on our behalf. As students at Boston University, we’re going to set the example at Boston University. Just by ourselves, because that’s what happened to us.”
Marlo Kalb, another student who was removed, clarified that the students did not come together to the function as a group. However, a majority of the students were Palestinian and empathetic toward the Palestinians’ struggles, Kalb said.
“We need to really push the conversation … so that racial profiling don’t happen again,” said Kalb, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. “Jews who are pro-Palestine … [have] been ostracized from their own Jewish community … It has really affected my life on campus.”
In response to an editorial on the incident published Thursday by The Daily Free Press, Hillel Director David Raphael submitted a letter to the editor stating that a video recording of the incident did not show “aggressive actions of at least two of the students.”
Raphael wrote one of the students had “yelled obscenities and prevented the meeting from carrying on its business.” The actions mentioned gave Boston University Police Department officers reason to dismiss the students, Raphael stated.
Though the link to the function described it as a public event, Raphael clarified that it was actually a private planning meeting and noted that it was the organizers’ mistake not to specify this in advance.
“We will be clearer on differentiating between public activities and private meetings,” Raphael wrote.
Kalb said the student Raphael described was a male, non-affiliated student she and the rest of the students did not personally know. Kalb explained that “his actions don’t speak for the rest of [their] action,” and he had requested to not be included in the video.
“We were asked to leave way before he said those things,” Kalb said.
The release outlined the chronology that led to the removal of eight BU students and the non-affiliated student, Kalb explained. The following incident was also shown in an edited video recording.
Seven BU students, “almost entirely comprised of students of Middle Eastern, South Asian and East Asian origins,” according to the release, sat down around a table when a policewoman approached them and said the organizers had ordered the removal of the students. The students then demanded that the policewoman clarify the reason behind their removal, to which she said that the think tank was a private function.
Samirah arrived after the incident and was denied entrance to the function by a policeman though he had previously RSVPed, according to the video and the release. The police then addressed the students, said they had disrupted the event and declared their action from a lawful perspective as trespassing.
Battaglino then addressed the group of students following the train of arguments. In the video, Battaglino said “[the organizers] can … say, ‘Hey, you’re welcome,’ but if for whatever reason they feel like it’s disrupting, they have the right to say, ‘I’m sorry, we want you to leave.’”
Several students said they wondered why the two sides of the story contradict each other.
Emili Husain, a freshman in the Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, said while she does not observe racial discrimination on campus, she would be deeply concerned if what the students described was true.
“I don’t really know which side to believe, so it is hard to make a comment,” Husain said. “If these people did not do anything wrong, then they deserve an apology. But if Hillel is telling the truth, it will be a different story.”
Luis Garcia, a sophomore in the School of Hospitality Administration, said the university has the right to ask students to leave if there were being disruptive, but if not, then the administration should apologize.
“I hope there was not any racial discrimination,” Garcia said. “If [the students] were being disruptive, then they should be escorted out. But if they weren’t being disruptive and [were] just kicked out, then it is an issue. Something needs to be done.”
Amanda Rosenberg, a junior in the College of Fine Arts, said that as a Jewish student, she agreed with the administration’s decision to tell the students to leave, regardless of if the students were disruptive or peaceful.
“I don’t think they deserve an apology,” Rosenberg said. “Even if they weren’t being disruptive, they were not hurt by [being asked] to leave, which is the right of any organization or association. I could be asked to leave the building, and that is their right.”
Alex Li contributed to the reporting of this article.