Activists who were arrested at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., on March 26 after staging a sit-in in the school’s Kirkland Hall calling for targeting Israel with boycotts have received punishment.
C. Cybele Raver, Vanderbilt’s provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, issued a statement updating the school community on the administration’s response to the demonstrations. “After a thorough review of the incident, including examination of evidence and interviews with students,” Raver stated, the school “issued a range of findings and sanctions that took the individual circumstances of each student’s conduct into account.”
Raver wrote that “the sanctions included disciplinary probation as well as suspension and expulsion.”
Vanderbilt would not identify which students received punishment, what the punishments were or what factors shaped the administration’s decisions.
“Student disciplinary outcomes are considered part of an individual student’s educational record, the contents of which are protected by federal privacy laws,” Julia Jordan, Senior Media Relations Specialist at Vanderbilt, told JNS. “We cannot release information that would make a student or group of students identifiable.”
Raver said “the gravity of this situation and these outcomes weighs heavily on those of us charged with carrying out our responsibility as leaders; we fully understand that student choices and decisions can lead to serious and costly consequences.”