ADDY PITTENGER, Arts & Life Editor—
Many political movements in history have been driven especially by college students, responsible for change in both their own communities and abroad. Examples of Denison student organizations taking action by promoting public awareness, advocacy and education can be found in Denison’s actively political community, and recently, a new organization has been in the works on making its way to Denison.
Students Ali Imran ‘24 and Greta Schreiber ‘24 have been working for several weeks to establish a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, abbreviated to SJP, on Denison’s campus.
Despite SJP’s presence at multiple different colleges, including in Ohio, Denison did not have an established chapter on its campus, something Imran and Schreiber have worked to change.
“A lot of students are passionate about being in solidarity with Palestinian people,” said Imran. “There have been incidents [in the past] where students or faculty have tried to talk about Palestine and they have been censored and harassed.”
SJP’s goals are to raise awareness and provide resources and access to information of the occupation of Palestine and bring forth the realities of direct experiences as well as to create a safe space for free speech to those advocating for Palestine. “We are approaching this more from an intersectional lens. We are not limiting ourselves to just short term goals,” said Imran.
With that, SJP also seeks to resist a culture of political neutrality. In other words, they seek to get people more engaged whether that be through education or activism, and strain from remaining neutral on disputed topics. Imran and Schreiber believe that the best way to achieve this objective is to have their practices align with their beliefs.
One of the main reasons why Imran and Schreiber started this organization is because of the situation in Palestine—Imran mentions the “general state and violence” that has been happening every day.
“There seems to be a general lack of knowledge about Palestine on Denison’s campus, and that is in part due to the silencing and censoring. A lot of students don’t want to get into or start researching Palestine because they think it’s a really complicated issue and fear all the conflict that comes up when people try to talk about Palestine, and that makes them scared to even start looking into it,” Schreiber added.
A major impetus behind bringing SJP to campus was to work with DCGA in order to bring more general discourse across the student body. Yet, even in collaboration to build connections with other organizations, there are always obstacles in the way.
“We’ve had to go through these roadblocks—the entire discussion about what’s not been talked about at Denison, why we cannot talk about these topics, what has taken so long to speak up. To summarize, the entire hassle and everything with it,” Imran stated.
With starting new organizations, a big issue is how to promote and write letters of purpose and constitutions, narrowing down what an organization stands for. Self-censorship has been a personal issue for both Imran and Schreiber.
“We’ve been dealing with a lot of self-censorship when trying to compose our constitution because unfortunately this is a topic that is hard to talk about,” Schreiber mentioned. “There are things that we believe in and that we want to say that we’ve had to figure out how we can say them” in a way that reflects the nuances of their mission, as well as in order to be taken seriously. “That goes back to language and how it is super important to consider. You have to use the correct language.”
When asked if SJP has a message to the Denison community regarding their organization, this was their conclusion:
“These are issues that affect all of us [regardless of social/political identity]. If we can all, at this campus, put in the effort to understand and listen to what has been happening in Palestine and listen to Palestinians, we will actually have no choice but to stand for Palestine.”
Recently, they posted an open letter of purpose jointly signed by about 100 students, faculty and alumni, and can be found through their social media, on Instagram as @denisonsjp.
SJP wishes to underline their openness to discussion, but also a firmness against appeasement and repression. They are an organization open to anyone who wants to join and intend to continue to promote their cause through media usage, meetings with scholarly speakers and other community events open to the whole Denison community.