This is absurd. The administration should override the student government. To call this liberal, pro-Israel group ‘white supremacist’ is so stupid, it’s insulting.
From the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:
Jewish students wanted to bring J Street to Sarah Lawrence. Why did the student senate say no?After Oct. 7, Sarah Lawrence College student Emilyn Toffler felt something was missing on campus.“My campus blew up with pro-Palestinian activism,” Toffler recalled. “I was encouraged to see my classmates engage with the issue, many for the first time, but I looked around campus and saw that there was no space for students to have conversation or nuanced dialogue.”Last fall, Toffler and another Jewish student tried to change the situation. They decided to form a campus chapter of J Street U, the college arm of the liberal pro-Israel group. With the help of a faculty advisor, they tried to make the club a campus reality.Nearly two dozen such J Street U chapters have formed nationwide since Oct. 7, as students have sought to promote the group’s self-described “pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian and pro-peace” outlook as an alternative to anti-Israel activism surging on campuses — as well as to hawkish campus pro-Israel activism.But when the students applied to the student government at Sarah Lawrence, an elite progressive liberal arts college in New York’s Westchester County, to make J Street U an official club, they encountered fierce resistance.After voicing their strong opposition to the group, the Student Senate rejected the J Street U application — the first time a J Street campus chapter has ever been rejected anywhere, according to the group. (The final vote tally was not included in the meeting minutes.) When the students appealed the decision, the senate rejected the appeal, too. And though some faculty and alumni supportive of the students have tried to lobby Sarah Lawrence’s administration to intervene, the college leadership has so far chosen not to.The Sarah Lawrence J Street rejection offers a window into how campus politics around Israel have evolved since Oct. 7. Two years after anti-Israel protests roiled campuses, even Jewish groups that support Palestinian statehood and sharply oppose Israeli government policies can be treated as beyond the pale.According to several Sarah Lawrence students and faculty members, it’s rare but not unprecedented for the student senate to reject a student club application. But what happened in deliberations over the J Street U application, they said, was shocking.Student senators compared recognizing the group to approving “a white supremacist organization,” according to an audio recording and transcript of the meeting obtained by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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