The Intercept reports in “Police Raid Pro-Palestine Students’ Home in FBI-Led Graffiti Investigation” that “George Mason University suspended its Students for Justice in Palestine chapter and effectively kicked out the group’s co-president.”
The piece begins: “In the early morning hours of November 7, more than 12 police officers showed up outside at an address in Springfield, Virginia, knocked, broke down the door, and raided the family home of two Palestinian American students at George Mason University. …
“In a letter Tuesday night on the George Mason raid, more than 80 groups, including chapters of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at Mason and 11 other schools, called on Mason to revoke the trespass orders, reinstate the SJP chapter, return laptops and phones to the two students, and conduct a full independent investigation into the decisions made by Mason police, school administrators, and the Board of Visitors — the university’s governing body — that led to the raid.”
The letter — “A Joint Statement On the Targeting of Mason Student Activists” — reads: “Do universities such as GMU routinely send phalanxes of police officers in military fatigues and armored vehicles, and carrying assault rifles, to break down the front door and raid the homes of students during the pre-dawn hours over an allegation of spray painting? Do administrators routinely rush to judgment and issue criminal trespass orders — the kind used to exclude serial sexual predators and stalkers from campus — against students who have been accused of graffiti? It appears that the answers to these questions may increasingly be ‘yes.’”Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at George Mason University are available for more information and interviews at FSJP.gmu@gmail.com.