Lucia Rutan, the ASUO senate president, listens to speakers during the public comments section of the meeting. The ASUO senate meeting, held May 8, 2024, saw a nearly three-hour public comments session as community members and students—many of whom were associated with the ongoing encampment demonstration or one of various Jewish student groups which have opposed the encampment—spoke on the topic of a “Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” resolution, which was received by senators the night before the meeting, and added to the agenda three hours before the meeting at 4 p.m. (Alex Hernandez/Emerald)
Correction: A previous version of this article misquoted a speaker, Diego Duarte, as saying: “I strongly urge this body to amend the resolution to include anywhere on statement recognizing the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people.” The article has been corrected to cite the proper quote stated by Duarte.
Just 53 minutes before midnight on May 8, the Associated Students of the University of Oregon passed a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions resolution calling for the divestment from the “Military-Industrial Complex,” and certain Israeli-affiliated companies with ties to the university. The resolution was passed after nearly four hours, including public comment and discussions between senators.
The resolution demands the UO Board of Trustees to “cease the purchasing” of products on the “BDS list,” which include Sabra and Hewlett-Packard, a technology hardware company. It states that ASUO will form a commission to “address student demands” regarding the “conflict,” including representatives from UO Students for Justice in Palestine, UO Jewish Voices for Peace, UO Chabad, UO Hillel and other voices including student workers and classified staff.
It also calls for “full and unequivocal transparency in the allocation and utilization of I-Fee funds” from UO.
The 15-to-one vote, with six senators abstaining, was decided with less than 40 minutes of public senator discussion.
The resolution was written by ASUO Senator-Elect Andrew Ducharme and several current senators including Sen. Taliek Lopez-DuBoff, Sen. Estelle Tedrick, Sen. Frankie Bodine and Mae Bracelin. It was co-sponsored by student organization UO Young Democratic Socialists of America and other ASUO Senators, including Sen. Kikachi Akpakwu, who is the ASUO vice president-elect, and Sen. Paris Woodward-Ganz.
Senators were given notice of the resolution at 7 p.m. on May 7, giving them just over 24 hours to review the resolution and vote on it. ASUO had publicly announced the vote on the resolution around 4 p.m. the day of the vote, causing senators Sam Galyen and Victoria Piñeiro to call the resolution “hasty.”
Some students criticized the resolution’s quick turnaround.
Former ASUO President Luda Isakharov, a member of Ducks for Israel who spoke at the meeting, said she wanted to “call out” the senate for a “terrible process.”
“Not giving the student body, or at least the students most impacted by this resolution any notice on a resolution covering a subject that is so critical right now has left little or no time for people to share viewpoints, attend your office hours, prepare their remarks, and most of us have yet to see or to be sent the final language of this resolution,” Isakharov said. “This is not normal for ASUO.”
ASUO President Chloé Webster also said that she didn’t know about the resolution until just a few days before from the vote.
“I don’t know if we did our best at letting all students know [about the resolution]. There may have needed to be more time for students to fully grapple with and understand it,” Webster said.
The reasoning behind the tight turnaround for the resolution, according to Webster, was because Senate President Lucia Rutan wanted to “take all sides into account” regarding the resolution’s implications before making a decision to add the resolution to the agenda.
“By the time she made the decision, it was pretty late,” Webster said.
Just before the vote took place, Rutan took responsibility for not sharing the resolution earlier.
“There’s no subjective choice when we’re talking about people’s emotions like this and so I take part for not announcing that this resolution was going to be talked about tonight. That’s part of my role, and I can acknowledge that,” Rutan said.
Webster said that, while a working group was announced to write the resolution in last week’s senate meeting, she was uncertain if “the words BDS were used in that announcement of the group.”
In the spring term of 2018, the ASUO Senate voted on and passed a BDS resolution presented by a student group, Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights., The resolution was later ruled unconstitutional by ASUO’s Constitution Court in February 2019.
According to ASUO’s constitution, programs funded by the student government cannot be denied access to activities paid for by the student incidental fee based on “sex, race, religion, age, sexual orientation, marital status, disabled, political view or national origin.” According to ASUO’s judicial branch, this violated the “viewpoint neutral” position that public universities must follow when distributing student fees.
Dozens of both pro-Palestine students, including demonstrators from the UO Coalition for Palestine encampment, and pro-Israel students from various groups were both present at the meeting. Speakers with different views on the resolution voiced their opinions on whether or not it should be passed. There was no time limit for speeches, though only 25 people were permitted in the meeting room at a time for capacity reasons.
Isakharov asked senators to vote “no” on the resolution, while Jewish Voice for Peace leader Gabriela Moreno and Students for Justice in Palestine co-leader Salem Younes both supported the resolution.
During the meeting, some of those who spoke said that the language in the resolution needed to be changed. Diego Duarte, a member of JVP and YDSA, was concerned that the resolution had been “weakened” in the 24 hours prior to the meeting. The original resolution acknowledged the number of people killed in Gaza, as well as the Israeli Defense Forces’ seizure of the Rafah border crossing, but did not refer to Israel’s military actions in Gaza as a “genocide.”
“The removal of language explicitly recognizing the Israeli attack on Gaza as a genocide is troubling,” Duarte said. “I strongly urge this body to amend the resolution to include a ‘whereas’ statement recognizing the ongoing genocide of Palestinian people.”
Before the motion to vote was made, the resolution document was edited to include information about the number of Israeli deaths from October 7, that there were 240 Israeli hostages taken and to change the language from “conflict” to “genocide.”
The 15 senators who voted “yes” on the resolution were: Frankie Bodine, Lan Tran, Yanling Joslin, Charlee Evans-Luna, Vithika Goyal, Kiki Akpakwu, Jordan Pridemore, Hannah Vo-Tran, Ravi Cullop, Paris Woodward-Ganz, Estelle Tedrick, Lucia Rutan, Donovan Selfridge, Abbi Mitchell and Taliek Lopez-DuBoff.
The six senators who abstained were Maria Soto Cuesta, Victoria Piñeiro, Sam Galyen, Daniel Vo, Trevor Adams and Cody Campbell.
One senator, Eric Nakamura, was absent from the vote. The sole “no” vote was Fisher Isenberg.
Andrew Ducharme, the main author of the resolution, said he was at first “worried” the resolution’s passage wasn’t going to happen due to some of the senators’ concerns over “not having enough time to review” it.
“I understand the problem that they want to be fully informed on the issues they are going to vote on,” Ducharme said. “I think enough people saw the light.”
Ducharme said that some senators’ “argument of delay” to take more time to consider the resolution is a “very common tactic used by people who want to stop things from happening.”
“I hope this is a step in ASUO history. I hope this is a step in UO history. To do this today is a great step towards reclaiming the power and tradition that [ASUO] has,” Ducharme said.
Once the vote was decided, some students with the Palestinian flag draped over their backs were seen celebrating, hugging, high-fiving each other and chanting “the students united will never be divided.”
Tea Bland, a UO student and media liaison for the UO Coalition for Palestine, described the passing of the BDS resolution as a “victory.”
“They’re listening to us, and we want them to keep listening to us,” Bland said. “Our mission doesn’t change. We’re still gonna be out here until the university divests and listens to its students and meets our demands.”
Bland said she understood why the resolution was passed quickly, due to the “urgent issue” of the war in Gaza.
“People are dying now and they will keep dying,” Bland said. “Voting on this as quickly as possible, I think, is a step in the right direction.”
UO student Barack Braslavski, a Jewish student who spoke against the resolution during the meeting, said he respected elements of the process even if the resolution ultimately passed.
“Obviously I’m a little concerned on how things are going to turn out for us on campus,” Braslavski said. “I respected how everyone was peaceful [during the public comment].”
Braslavski spoke during the meeting on his concerns about whether the resolution would call for the removal of Israeli academic institutions partnering with UO. It later was not included in the final writings of the resolution.
“It felt like they listened and I was very grateful for that. There’s a lot about BDS that is very harmful to the Jewish community, but overall I knew it was going to pass coming into [the meeting],” he said.
Lopez-DuBoff said that supporting the resolution was not “about religion,” but about showing “support” to the students.
“I would say we just did our job,” Lopez-DuBoff said. “That’s all we did today. We came in, we heard from students and we did what we thought was right. And I’m really proud of the entire team for coming through with that.”
Editor’s Note: A previous version of this articled failed to mention the complete list of the author’s behind the BDS resolution, which also includes Senator Frankie Bodine and Mae Bracelin. Both authors have now been attributed.
