Chapman’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) officially launched a Gaza solidarity encampment on May 2. According to a joint Instagram post in collaboration with Chapman Democrats, the encampment is located outside of Wilkinson Hall in a grassy area on campus. 

The encampment began early in the morning on May 2 and is estimated to run until the university “decides to divest,” according to Dariush Norton, a member of SJP who has been helping to organize the encampment.

SJP stated via an Instagram post that its goals for the encampment are to get campus administration to meet its demands, which include calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, divestment of all funding and connections to brands that support occupation in Palestine. Additionally, SJP is pushing for financial transparency of where tuition money is spent and rejection of the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC).

The agenda for day one of the encampment started with a “know your rights training” followed by a “de-escalation training” session. Faculty members and students spoke, banners were made and attendees participated in games and activities throughout the day.

Fred Smoller, an associate professor of political science at Chapman, was one of the faculty members who spoke up. Smoller is Jewish and has traveled to Israel with students in the past.

“I know (the encampment for Palestine) seems awkward,” Smoller told attendees. “You’re setting up tents; that’s not what we usually do. You’re taking a stand. I’m sure people are saying, ‘Why are you doing this?’ ‘Why are you making noise?’ They may criticize you, they may spit at you, they may make you feel uncomfortable. But hold on to your moral compass. Hold on to what we know is the right thing to do.”

In between speeches, students participating in the encampment yelled a number of various chants, including: “What do we want? Divestment. When do we want it? Yesterday.”

According to Norton, an outside pro-Palestinian organization came to campus in what SJP thought was “more of a show of solidarity.” However, Norton said that the outside organization attempted to take control of the encampment and also advocated for protesting the event Students Supporting Israel (SSI) was hosting in the evening.

“It turned into more so them trying to take it over,” Norton said. “We were trying to stay peaceful and chill, but they were really adamant about protesting the soldiers on campus, which we had decided against doing just to focus our energy on the encampment because there’s not very many of us organizing, and it’s kind of all hands on deck. We couldn’t really be concerned about shutting down someone else’s event when we have our own events to plan.”

For the second day of the encampment, attendees participated in a “Letters to Palestine” event, as well as Shabbat with the OC-based organization Jewish Voice for Peace. SJP is staying on campus for the weekend, with a schedule of events posted for May 4 and May 5 posted on their Instagram account. Over the weekend, attendees listened to live music performed by the Santa Ana-based volunteer “alternative space” El Centro Cultural and made art with members of the Santa Ana City Council, among other activities. See the schedule for May 6 here.

Dean of Students Jerry Price confirmed in a May 3 email to the Chapman community that “a group of non-student protestors from the community” came onto campus to protest the SSI event and that they were a separate group from the student protestors who were also there.

“In fact, our students helped persuade the community members to leave the campus once the Irvine Lecture Hall event concluded,” Price wrote. “While we will give our students ample opportunity to express their views, we have no interest in being a forum for the outside community, which is a sentiment shared by our students.”

In the same email, Price expressed his sentiments about the encampment and acknowledged the concerns held by some members of the Chapman community. Price also mentioned that he attended the first day of the encampment.

“I want to recognize that the presence of an encampment is upsetting to some of our community members,” Price wrote. “I encourage you not to project the images and reports you see and hear from other campuses onto our situation at Chapman. We have been in frequent communication with the students involved in this demonstration, and I am very confident that we share the same goal of a peaceful demonstration without significant disruption to other students or university operations.”

Additionally, Chapman’s Department of Public Safety (PSAFE) and the Orange Police Department have been seen near the encampment.

Norton also told The Panther that SJP has its own security for the encampment in the form of the marshals, who are mostly SJP members, though some are “trusted organizers from other movements” that SJP has been a part of. These marshals, according to Norton, have been trained in protests and de-escalation, and they have also been in the encampments at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Southern California.

“We’re choosing to have our own security for our own safety as we have people that are here solely in defense of us, rather than relying on an outside security group, just in case,” Norton said.

SJP called for anyone in the Orange County and Chapman communities to show their support by coming to the encampment. The organizers encouraged support through food and cash donations as well. Additional requested items for donations are listed in a group chat on the Signal app, which can be accessed by scanning a QR code on this Instagram post. SJP is also accepting monetary donations through Venmo at @PawsUpForPalCU.

The Panther received a statement May 4 provided by a group that speaks for many of Chapman’s students. The leader of the group said they didn’t want to be identified because it would put a “bigger target” on them. In this statement, the group wrote that the encampments “have caused a lot of anxiety” as the encampment was set up on Chapman’s Evening of Holocaust Remembrance, which is during Jewish American Heritage Month.

“We wish this demonstration included calls for Hamas to surrender, the release of the hostages and condemnation of Oct. 7, as that was what ended the ceasefire between Israel and Gaza,” the group wrote. “We aren’t too sure what they are trying to or actually going to accomplish by having this display up. Many of the signs and posters have words that have been tokenized to describe a very nuanced conflict that are completely demonizing one side. It is unfortunate they have resorted to this campus disruption right before finals and graduation and have received frustrations even from students not involved in the conflict or with little to no opinion on the current war.”

Chapman is following in the footsteps of other nearby college campuses that have held recent encampments.

At the University of California, Irvine (UCI) campus, an encampment was set up on April 29. Similarly to Chapman’s set-up, the encampment at Irvine included speeches, informative sessions and arts and crafts, according to the OC Register.

In the same article, UCI students told the OC Register that they scheduled a meeting with the university’s administration for May 2 to discuss the protesters’ demands. 

A weeklong protest held at UCLA came to an end on May 2 after police officers took down the protesters’ encampment. More than 100 protesters were detained. 

This intervention came after law enforcement threatened the protesters with arrest if they did not clear the encampment. 

Norton offered some final thoughts to The Panther.

“We are prepared to stay out here as long as it takes,” he said. “It’s in Chapman’s hands how long we decide to stay out here.” 

This is a developing story. Follow The Panther on social media and at www.thepanthernewspaper.org for updates.

Tatum Foulger and Laila Freeman contributed to this report.