Defining a social movement can be difficult to do. During the days of the encampment at DU, there was a lot of messaging from encampment participants to each other and to the administration, but from an outside perspective, it is hard to grasp what it was like.
For this purpose, in a series of interviews with encampment participants, I am working to explain the encampment from the perspective of those who were there. I was able to sit down with Reina Ortiz, a current second-year at the University of Denver, who was involved in the encampment last spring.
How would you define the encampment?
While the encampment was in essence a protest space, Ortiz added that it was also an educational, artistic and spiritual space. The participants worked with individual fundraisers and at one point donated 4,000 liters of water. They had teach-ins, poetry nights and meals in the community. They also had a blessing performed by Native Student Alliance (NSA) members on the second day of the camp, Shabbat dinner every Friday and Jamal prayer at noon weekly.
“A lot of goodness came out of the encampment and I wish the school recognized that more… they talk about the tensions, hate and division… [but it was] a beautiful and open space that is not common at DU,” Ortiz said.
They had authors, professors, panelists and three Colorado state representatives come to talk to encampment members.
“We exist in an academic space,” Ortiz said. “What was presented by the university was that this is an academic space and [the existence of the encampment] was a disruption of that education, but if their goal is to educate and professionally develop students. This is a way to do just that.”
What were the demands of the encampment and what was done to try to reach those demands?
The four main demands were “disclosure”: transparency of endowment investments and financial partnerships; “divestment”: DU shall divest from Israel; “declare: DU will boycott Israel economically and academically; and “defend”: DU shall defend the right to protest on campus and provide amnesty to students.
A fifth one mentioned was to decolonize by dropping the pioneer moniker and the racist history of DU. To meet these demands encampment members published an open letter to Chancellor Jeremy Haefner on the second day of the encampment stating their demands. They met multiple times with the administration for meetings that went on for hours.
“It was a lot of asking, conversations and open dialogue,” Ortiz explained, “which is something that is explicitly encouraged in the honor code.”
Encampment members also wrote to the deans of their individual colleges, made connections with faculty and mostly followed “school-sanctioned methods” to try to reach their demands.
Ortiz also said that there was maybe even too much dialogue, “counter to what administration might think,” and that there was “not enough action” with too much time spent talking about methods or trying to be in conversation with the university’s administration.
What do you think of how the university handled the encampment?
Ortiz said that the administration felt extremely insincere from the first day. That they wanted to “take a neutral stance,” and employ a both-sides debate.
A member of campus safety stated that they worked in connection with Chabad and Hillel so a Rabbi could be there while the encampment was getting set up. Which makes it more of a religious issue and detracts from the message the encampment set out, which was not about religion but rather colonization and genocide.
“They used ID checks to curb the conversation so they didn’t have to meet demands,” Ortiz said.
Ortiz also mentioned how they did not equitably distribute repercussions and that when members of the encampment were asking Student Rights & Responsibilities (SRR) staff why certain people or they themselves had received punishment in connection to their involvement, they were not able to get a straight answer. Ortiz said that it felt especially unsafe for people of color and queer people. “DU is not fighting as hard to keep you here.” Ortiz discussed that this may be because of the amount of money contributed to the school by other, more privileged students, or maybe because the university has been explicitly racist and homophobic throughout their history.
Ortiz told me that, during the encampment, Chancellor Haefner was asked if there was an external threat that would justify the ID checks and he outright said that there wasn’t. A lot of the justification the university used against the encampment was that it was an issue of safety.
Ortiz pointed out that “if they were trying to keep students safe, then they wouldn’t have hyper-surveilled protesters…they wouldn’t have floodlights that couldn’t be turned off right next to sleeping students… they wouldn’t have banned the police liaison who was meant to act as a mediator between campus safety and encampment members.”
Ortiz believes that they used fear and intimidation tactics to discourage protestors while saying they were allowing the encampment to look like they were doing right by students.
What is the future of protest at DU?
In the old Honor Code, there was a clause that stated that disruption that is caused by protest should be allowed and that there were no expressed repercussions. Now there is a new protest policy. While throughout the policy the university commits and aligns itself with free speech and freedom of expression, it also has very specific and frankly nonsensical requirements for protesting. Students are required to register their protest on Crimson Connect, notify the university of how many people intend to be there, report any sound amplifiers, it must conclude by 10 p.m., etc.
They want to treat protests like any other campus event. “It names all the ways DU can be involved, shutdown and sanction protests, but there is not a single section that protects protestors from institutional abuse,” Ortiz said.
Ortiz then mentioned the Frederick Douglass quote, “‘If there is no struggle there is no progress.’” “In essence, protest is not meant to be safe,” Ortiz said. “It is meant to cause a disruption,” and that the “safety risks were exacerbated by campus safety by cutting off outside resources, corralling protestors and acting heavy-handed with restrictions.”
While there was a lot of dialogue, Ortiz said the university wanted to “paint protestors as noncompliant when we were far more compliant than I think we maybe even should have been.”
Since the university did not do anything through conversation, it felt as though encampment members had to be more and more disobedient to try to get their demands met. This included refusing ID checks. Many Native students also felt insulted by the ID checks. Ortiz said this is because “they want to put a land acknowledgment at the end of emails, but then they ID and sanction students on land that these students have more connection to than the university.”
They used the same tactics of ID checks for Black Africans in South Africa during Apartheid and Palestinians in the West Bank as they did here, Ortiz pointed out.
Ortiz concluded “If nothing else, [the encampment] created a community for people to find each other who are passionate about similar issues…if there is any future of student activism at DU it is going to have to heavily rely on the same community building. People were very disheartened because it was the first time people felt that they found a strong community and could speak openly about the things they care about.”
Ortiz added that hope is not lost and that “there are still spaces like Divest DU, Student Union for Progress, Latin and Indigenous Student Alliance (LAISA) and a new club called Collective Liberation (started by Ortiz herself) that is hoping to foster the same space for students to be able to be open and come together on issues here and abroad.”
Transparency of university funding has become an increasing concern among students at DU with tuition raises every year but more and more staff getting laid off, resources being reduced or cut and no tangible improvements to student’s education or housing. If you are a fellow concerned student, I would encourage you to get involved in one of the many student groups on campus and keep questioning. As of now, the university still is funding a foreign war over your professor’s salaries, housing and education. The mismanagement of funds is a big deal; it is time to ask whether the university has the right priorities when it comes to your tuition money.
