Letter to the Editor: Forced Out: My Commencement Experience

Students at commencement, and this year as a whole, have given a green light for our school and our government to sponsor the complete forced displacement of Palestinians from Gaza as seen by the 300,000 displaced, over 200 martyred and around 70 kitchens bombed in the last 48 hours alone (at the time of writing this, May 15-17), according to the Government Media Office in Gaza. We have given a green light by allowing fear of personal repercussions to justify our doing nothing; to separate ourselves from struggle; to lay low and hope that things will blow over, when deep down, we all know that our genocidal policies abroad and authoritarian ones at home cannot simply blow over without resistance.

Our student community has played an important role in popularizing support for Palestine in the West as the 3rd encampment after Columbia, but we’ve largely seceded from the struggle.  Many students take the threat of repression as an excuse to leave their advocacy behind them, and some even take this threat as a means to secede from their community. This division and isolation is a primary goal of repression. 

Emerson made sure every graduate understood the school is willing to use force against speech, from the contract that Emerson made every graduate sign banning protest at commencement, to the email reminders that force would be used to remove any student that talks during a speaker, who zips down their gowns, who brings a prop, who stops in line, etc. Students did all of the above just for fun: stopping on stage to dance, yelling to the audience, unzipping gowns to goofy shirts, one even crawled on all fours and carried the diploma in their mouth like a dog, but only pro-Palestine messages were censored. And only I was removed.

Both before and during graduation many students approached me asking if I had planned to protest. The context was always the same: they informed me that they supported any disruption, but could not protest themselves due to fear of detainment, presence of family, or fear of the administration targeting them. These are valid concerns. However, it is the utilization of fear and personal gain that creates our compliance with authoritarian structures.  Last year, there were many commencement protesters. While some were disciplined after their graduation with multi-year campus bans, none were removed. The ceremony was disrupted by a critical mass. This year, there was almost no dissidence but for some keffiyehs. Several people mentioned that they wanted to bring a keffiyeh, but thought that would be cause for removal. It is not rules alone that create authoritarian structures, but predictive compliance.

By taking action at graduation, I and a handful of others independently hoped to combat this environment of fear. By protesting during our walk, we hoped to fight the normalcy that our peers have begun to accept amidst the conditions of open genocide in Palestine. By taking this moment of face-out, public action, we were encouraging advocacy in everyday spaces of privilege and complicity.

Graduates were made to walk through a checkpoint upon entry to the Agganis Arena. While the promise of a metal detector and pat down were false, we were photographed, ID’d, and sorted into administrative representatives. My representative just so happened to be Associate Director of Community Standards Danny Foster who has repeatedly been chosen to investigate and discipline my speech throughout the years.

When walking to the main area of the arena, graduates were greeted by a number of police forces including BU police, private security teams, and ECPD. Interim Police Chief Robert Casagrande identified me while I was in line to enter the arena, staring me down for over a minute without breaking eye contact. Perhaps my keffiyeh or my pins which read “Free Palestine,” “Boylston Street Student Union,” “JAZ,” and “By Any Means Necessary” were deemed a danger to the ceremony.

President Bernhardt and Chair of Trustees Eric Alexander began speaking and a small number of students began to sporadically boo. By this time, I had begun to be shadowed by private security.

When I walked onto the stage, the camera had already cut to a wide shot, obscuring my message. The same occurred for others with keffiyeh and/or pro Palestinian messages on their hats. Without knowing the feed had been cut, I showed the camera my message: “End the Occupation, Free the Land” was written on a piece of poster paper on my hat. After grabbing my diploma, I ripped the paper off to reveal the message on the other side: “Emerson invests in genocide.” As I began to walk out of the shot, the feed cut back to the graduates. At this time, I reached into my pocket, pulled out a Palestinian flag, waved it in front of the camera, and chanted “Free Palestine” a couple of times before stepping off of the stage.

As I walked off the stairs, I was immediately shadowed closely by ECPD officers, including Casagrande. They said nothing and acted only as physical intimidation. Emerson Commencement Director Vicky Peterson said, “Yep. This one’s done for the day.” At this point, I stopped in place in order to access my pocket and begin recording until I was forced out by the ECPD. Within 45 seconds of being on stage, I was outside, alone, in my full regalia.

Emerson used physical force not only to intimidate their graduates into predictive compliance, but also to remove protesters from the area. As we leave the student body, it is vital for the community to understand the power of collective dissent. Unfortunately, fascism is popular, likely because it inflates individuals’ sense of personal achievement and self worth to justify their association with things like support for genocide. Those who believe themselves to be resistant to the draw of personal reward justify non-action due to fear of repercussions. When people transcend this fear, even for a moment, the system must use brute force. Why? To prevent collective resistance which undoes the individual appeal of fascism.

We must stand with our peers in struggle. To leave our peers alone in the struggle is to accept their brutalization, to accept the escalating conditions at home and in Palestine. This action does nothing to free Palestine, but I hope it can show that action is still possible to a collective that just might take on the work to truly separate the Zionist entity’s apartheid regime from the institutions that support it.