Late last month, students across Vermont, and the country, set up pro-Palestinian encampments on university campuses to protest the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Tent encampments at the University of Vermont and Middlebury College lasted over a week, with protesters packing up earlier this month after administrators met some of their demands — and with the end of the school year looming.
On at least one Vermont college campus, however, a protest camp remains. At Craftsbury Common’s tiny Sterling College — student body roughly 60 — roughly half a dozen tents were still standing on the school’s campus as of Thursday afternoon.
Payton Graham, a graduating Sterling student and protest organizer, helped set up the encampment April 28 with the goal of “centering the genocide of Palestinians and wanting to make a show of our support for Palestinian Liberation,” she said. “And do that very publicly, very visibly.”
Sterling students set up the encampment the same day that camps sprung up at UVM and Middlebury. At the progressive, environmentally focused experiential college, students estimated that between six and 14 protesters have been spending nights in the tents since they were pitched, even through a series of soaking thunderstorms in recent days.
Sterling’s protest movement seems likely to wrap up in the coming days, however. Academic activities ended earlier this week, and the school’s graduation ceremony is taking place this weekend, after which students will return home.
But students say they are committed to achieving their goals, even after the semester ends.
“It’s an important thing to raise awareness about, to make some noise about, to have the school live up to its mission and make a statement saying that genocide is bad,” said Kris Prescott, a first-year student.
As at other schools, Sterling protesters issued a list of demands to administrators. They are calling on Sterling to divest its roughly $1.2 million endowment from companies that profit from the war in Gaza, issue a public call for a cease-fire, boycott Israeli institutions and cultivate ties with Palestinian ones, and offer amnesty for student participants.
Pro-Palestinian protest encampments at universities around the U.S. have met with varying responses from administrators. Thousands of students across the country have been arrested in police crackdowns.
In Vermont, however, administrators have generally opted for a more collaborative approach.
On May 6, after days of discussions with students, Middlebury President Laurie Patton issued a public statement calling for “an immediate ceasefire” and administrators agreed to continue discussing protesters’ other demands.
And at UVM, administrators released some information about the college’s investments and announced that a controversial commencement speaker, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, would not speak after all. (UVM said the release of investment information was part of a routine disclosure.)
For the past two weeks, Sterling students have met twice a week with the president, Scott Thomas, and other administrators to discuss their demands.
“I support the vocal condemnation of this ongoing bloodshed,” Thomas said in an interview. “The protest itself is exactly what should be done on a college campus like ours.”
But meeting protesters’ demands is complicated, he said, especially in a span of just a few weeks.
For one thing, Sterling already adheres to detailed guidelines around the investment of its endowment. Under Sterling policy, the endowment cannot be invested in weapons manufacturing or “activities that provide strategic support to repressive regimes,” Thomas said.
And in the waning days of the school year, he said, there was not enough time to put together a statement calling for a cease-fire that would be acceptable to all stakeholders.
“As the president, I’m cautious about issuing a statement that speaks for all of the constituents in the college,” he said. “I’m hearing from people that have quite different perspectives on this.”
Thomas said he was committed to setting up a scholarship for displaced students and partnering with academics fleeing violence or oppression, through an organization such as Scholars at Risk.
But some protesters expressed frustration with what they see as a lack of movement on their demands, particularly the call for a cease-fire statement.
“Sterling has this reputation of being stewards of environmental and social change, and that’s what they’re supposed to be teaching us how to do,” said Sarah Kennedy, who is graduating from Sterling with an associate degree this year, in an interview.
Some students, she said, feel that “the leadership is not reflecting what the school claims its mission and its vision is.”
Still, on the tight-knit Craftsbury Common campus, discussions have been fairly civil. Some of the tents pitched on the school green are college property rented by students, and administrators have waived a policy that limits camping on campus.
And both students and administrators said they expect that protesters will face no disciplinary action.
“You’ll only be charged if you damage a tent,” Hannah Rushing, Sterling’s director of advancement, quipped in an interview Thursday.