#WTH Justice for pro-Hamas college brats

Vanderbilt leads again

Warning: This story starts with some ick, moves on to some ridic, and ends with a kick. And no, this is not the start of a poetic trend at WTH.

Subscribers to The Free Press were this week treated to a farcically hilarious story about a pro-Hamas Vanderbilt student protester who called 911 because the university had denied her access to bathrooms in the building she was illegally occupying, and she couldn’t change her tampon. TFP gives a little more detail, but the whole story deserves telling. And for WTH subscribers, you know I pay particular attention to Vandy because one of my girls is a graduate, and one is a current student.

Let’s start with 2024 and my post about this excellent start of semester letter from Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier. Here’s part of the excerpt:

First, let there be no question that Vanderbilt unequivocally considers calls for violence or genocide against any member of the Vanderbilt community to be evil, repugnant and violative of university policy. As I stated in my message to you in the fall, the university strongly condemns antisemitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia and other forms of hate. 

Second, in response to the war in Gaza, there have been calls on campuses across the country for institutions of higher education to join the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Unless required by law, Vanderbilt will not boycott or divest from companies for doing business in or with any specific nations, including Israel. 

I share this again because it will contextualize what happened in the last week. Certain Vandy students had sought to push through a BDS amendment to the Vanderbilt Student Government Constitution. They followed what appeared to be correct procedures, gathering signatures etc, and being coached by the national level BDS movement. But then the school leadership exercised its authority and removed the amendment from consideration. Per The Tennessean, Vanderbilt leadership said that “proposing Vanderbilt Student Government adopt boycott, divestment and sanctions tactics” was removed due to “potential conflict with federal and state laws,” adding that such boycotts could render the school “ineligible for new state contracts and could have existing contracts voided.”

So far so good. Students behaving like students, school administrators behaving like adults. Again, this isn’t with a view to the BDS substance — you know what we think here at WTH. This is just about the process. Anyway, that’s when things started to go south.

Students were displeased, and sought to demonstrate their displeasure by occupying an under-construction, partially closed building housing the school’s Chancellor. They had no permit to do so. And the school reacted accordingly, locking down the building, locking the bathrooms, and, mildly hilariously, having Panera delivered to security officials, but not the students. (Contrast that, btw, with the story Larry Summers told us about a Harvard dean handing food to illegal sit in protesters…) Suzy Weiss from TFP tells it best:

The protesters remained there for nearly 21.5 hours—blowing Harvard’s 12-hour “hunger strike,” also known as a good night’s sleep—out of the water, before police began removing and arresting students, some of whom have since been suspended. 

There are many dumbfounding moments from this latest campus frenzy—for example, when the students, arms linked, called the black police officers protecting the chancellor “puppets.”

Now the story gets less funny and more serious, in a good way. We all know what the right way for a school to react is. And Vanderbilt does just that. Per a letter from the Chancellor to students and parents, “[a]ll students remaining inside Kirkland left voluntarily around 6 a.m. after forcibly entering the building [see video] shortly after 9 a.m. Tuesday. All protest participants who breached the building will be placed on interim suspension. 

“The Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County Magistrate’s Office has charged three students with Class A misdemeanor assault for pushing a Community Service Officer as well as a staff member who offered to meet with them as they entered Kirkland Hall on Tuesday. A fourth student has been charged with vandalism after breaking a window in the building’s exterior Tuesday evening.”

Vanderbilt has repeatedly underscored that it is not the substance of the protest — pro-Hamas, pro-BDS — that it objects to. Rather, it is the repeated violation of school rules and procedures. If you watch the videos, you’ll see that these privileged, bigoted, little snowflakes somehow thought they were at Harvard or Columbia, where no transgressions are serious enough to result in disciplinary action. Deirmeier himself, however, is not confused.

In certain states, and in certain federal cases, signing up to BDS is illegal. In most states, breaking, entering, and property damage are illegal (sorry people of NY and Oregon, citizens of Chicago and Oakland — not in your states). And in many states, if you violate the law, you are prosecuted. And then, if you violate your school’s rules, you are suspended. In this case, students were both prosecuted and suspended. This is a life lesson for these little schmucks, and exactly the kind of life lesson one wants for one’s children when one is paying north of $80,000 a year for education.

One little additional note: Don’t confuse their students with righteous justice warriors. In addition to their anti-Israel shenanigans, they have sought to intimidate Jewish students at purely Jewish events on campus, demonstrating and catcalling at gatherings such as picnics for Chabad and Hillel members. There’s a word for that: Antisemitism.