ITHACA, N.Y. — Administrators at Cornell University temporarily suspended four students and imposed a three-year “persona non grata“ status for their involvement in a Sept. 18 pro-Palestinian protest where attendees pushed past police officers to shut down a career fair. Persona non grata status bans the students from campus.
Cornell police officers arrested three of the four students last week for using force to enter the Statler Hotel during the protest, according to a statement announcing the suspensions sent Thursday from the Coalition for Mutual Liberation (CML), a student-led activist group leading pro-Palestian demonstrations on campus.
Atakan Deviren, a sophomore at the university and co-chair of the Cornell chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, was among the four suspended. University police officers arrested Deviren outside his on-campus dormitory room on the morning of Oct. 10. Deviren was then transported to the Tompkins County Sheriff’s Office for booking.
Deviren told The Ithaca Voice Thursday that this is the first time he had been arrested.
“They assume we’re all dangerous. That we’re a threat to the community,” Deviren said. “But if we were really a threat to the community, I don’t think they would have waited a month to kick us off campus.”
Jacob Berman, a senior at Cornell and president of the university’s branch of the Jewish Voice for Peace organization, was among the four suspended Wednesday. Berman was not arrested.
“I did not plan the rally. I did not lead the rally. I didn’t even speak at the rally,” Berman said in an interview Thursday.
The two other students were not identified in CML’s announcement.
Cornell’s Vice President for University Relations Joel Malina released a statement on Oct. 10 that said the university had identified 19 individuals who “disrupted university operations as part of a protest that shut down the Sept. 18 career fair.” Berman said since then, three of his friends had been arrested — “I thought I was in the clear.”
Berman requested leniency in the three-year ban to attend Shabbat services on campus, which he helps lead. This request was denied in a meeting with Christina Liang, the director of the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards (OSCCS), according to reporting in the Cornell Sun.
During the meeting, Berman told The Ithaca Voice that “a plain-clothed cop with a gun holster handed [him] a piece of paper that [he] had to sign saying [he was] not allowed on campus.”
Deviren also had a meeting with the OSCCS regarding his temporary suspension and said his experience was similar to Berman. The two were informed they would be automatically disenrolled in classes in three weeks, depending on if they move forward with the university’s appeal process.
Following their meetings, the two began working on statements with academic advisors to submit in order to appeal the university’s decision.
Liang informed Deviren, who currently lives in an on-campus dormitory, that he would be evicted if he did not choose to appeal his suspension in three business days.
Neither of them was told which sections of Cornell’s Code of Conduct they violated by participating in the protest at the Statler Hotel.
“I’m curious to hear what exactly I’ve done,” Deviern said. “There’s no due process.”
A Cornell spokesperson directed The Ithaca Voice to Malina’s Oct. 10 statement when contacted for comment.
Several other student activists currently face non-academic suspensions, according to the statement from CML, which prohibits them from campus beyond attending classes.
Cornell temporarily suspended Momodou Taal, an international graduate student, in late September, which jeopardized his ability to remain in the county to complete his doctorate in Africana Studies. Taal’s suspension stemmed from the Sept. 18 protest.
Taal garnered worldwide media attention in the weeks after his suspension. After appealing the decision, Taal was informed he would not be withdrawn from courses and would be able to complete his degree. Like the four students suspended this week, Taal is not allowed on Cornell’s campus as part of the decision.
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