As the week started, Rutgers University joined the long list of institutions whose campuses have been taken over by anti-Israel/pro-Hamas demonstrators.
The tents were set up in the heart of Rutgers-New Brunswick on Monday afternoon during a protest march announced by the university’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, a political organization involved in student-led protests demanding a cease-fire on college campuses across the nation.The students are part of a growing movement of college students occupying campus spaces and asking university leadership to divest from Israeli corporate and cultural interests.The Rutgers encampment took place peacefully and without interference from university administration on the greens on Voorhees Mall, a member of the group and junior on campus who did not want to be identified said in an interview.”We will not leave Voorhees Mall the same way Palestinians in Gaza refuse to leave their homes until our demands are met,” the Rutgers-SJP group said in a press release, referring to university administrators’ “not acknowledging” Palestinian students.
Legal Insurrection readers may recall we covered Rutges’ experience with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) earlier this year. Masked SJP members listed demands for the campus during a press conference in front of a sign that said, “Rutgers profits off of Palestinian suffering,” and wearing the traditional Arab headscarf, the keffiyeh. That was after the student government enabled SJP antics by forking over $20,000 for teach-ins and conferences.
However, the tide may be turning against the hate-campers. Rutgers students now complain of “protest fatigue” and want the encampment gone.
Atan, an information technology major, had no sooner stepped outside the Art Library in Voorhees Hall when he caught his first glimpse of several tents assembled by pro-Palestinian protestors.“We walked out and they were all banging on drums and yelling,” he said. “It used to be a nice campus, but now when you walk around, it’s just a bunch of protests and people yelling.”Several students who spoke to TAPinto New Brunswick on Tuesday said they have had enough of protests and marches that spread over the College Avenue campus following Hamas’ attacks on Israeli citizens on Oct. 7 and Israel’s military response….One student even said he and his friends are experiencing “protest fatigue” because not only have spaces such as Voorhees Mall and Brower Commons been occupied by rallies organized by Students for Justice in Palestine and other groups, but there has even been a smattering of protests from Rutgers faculty union members speaking out against proposed cuts in the English department that could result in several adjunct faculty members not being rehired in the fall.
I project that many more Americans—both on and off the nation’s campuses—will be suffering from “protest fatigue” before 2024 is over.
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