Front gates of Smith College.
Photo by Sydney Wiser ‘27.
By Sydney Wiser ʼ27
Staff Writer
Content warning: this article mentions mass death and imperialist violence.
Students, staff and community members gathered outside of College Hall at Smith College in Northampton. Flowers were laid out across the entryway at the front of the campus. Large camping tents were pitched just behind the gates. A banner reading “DIVEST FROM WAR INVEST IN PEACE” hung from a window of College Hall. Students inside peered out from the windows.
For 13 days, this was the scene outside Smith College.
On March 27, roughly 50 students began their occupation of College Hall, according to Smith first-year Simran Baveja, who is a member of Smith Students for Justice in Palestine, the group that organized the protest. College Hall is Smith’s main administrative building.
The students had previously sent Smith College’s Board of Trustees a proposal demanding that the college endowment divest from seven prominent weapons manufacturing companies. Their online petition, which has amassed over 2,139 signatures as of April 8, identifies companies like “Lockheed Martin, Boeing, L3Harris, [RTX Corporation], General Dynamics, Hexcel, and [Northrop] Grumman.” (Editor’s note: RTX Corporation was formerly known as Raytheon.)
On March 26, Smith College’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility, which determines the social responsibilities of Smith’s investments, sent a campus-wide email rejecting the proposal and stating that “the endowment’s investment in military contractors and weapons manufacturers is negligible and entirely indirect.”
“We were appalled by this decision, and do not believe that there is such a thing as a ‘negligible’ contribution to genocide and death,” Baveja said in an interview with Mount Holyoke News. “We maintain that the indirect structure of the investments is irrelevant. The Smith funded bombs that fall on Gaza kill innocent people, regardless of whether they were paid for through direct or indirect investment.” Students began their occupation of College Hall the following day.
The choice to protest at College Hall was purposeful for Students for Justice in Palestine. The Smith College website explains that the building houses the offices of the president, the dean of the college, the dean of the faculty, financial aid, the registrar and disability services in addition to other important offices on campus. “By occupying this building, we are able to create a disruption that forces [the] Smith administration to acknowledge our demands,” Baveja said.
Baveja also noted that College Hall has a history of student activism. One of the more widely known instances was the 1986 student occupation of College Hall in protest of South African apartheid, which the student told MHN that SJP modeled their current protest after.
During their 13 days of occupation, the students inside College Hall established an almost daily schedule. Bajeva explained that since the group’s decisions were voted on by consensus, they generally had a full group meeting in the morning, addressing what they wanted to accomplish that day. They then broke off into working groups to address more specific areas like press, alum communications and strategizing with supporters outside.
Some students attended their classes virtually during the day as well. At night, the students had another full-group meeting where the working groups discussed what they had achieved that day.
Students also organized events outside of College Hall to draw attention to the movement within. “To ensure the safety of students in the building, as well as to show the Smith administration the overwhelming student support for divestment, we have been calling on students, alums, faculty, and local community members to show up to the rallies, teach-ins, and other events outside,” Baveja explained. “The turnout has been consistently amazing, and we are beyond grateful to everyone who has shown up to support us, lead a teach-in, or even camp outside overnight in solidarity. Though the students occupying the building are inside, our strength is collective, and having our supporters outside is absolutely essential.”
During the sit-in, the Smith SJP Instagram advertised events open to all and posted daily updates about the occupation. At a rally hosted on April 5, members of the Smith SJP gave speeches to a crowd of students, staff and community members. They also hosted a Q&A with the students inside College Hall, using a megaphone and a microphone to communicate through an open window in the building.
According to statements posted on the Smith SJP Instagram page, a group of students from the group met with Smith President Sarah Willie-LeBreton on March 30 to discuss their demands, which included that President Willie-LeBreton “explicitly recommend divestment to ACIR [and] the Board of Trustees” and publicly acknowledge and investigate “the [March 27] assault of a student by staff member Jim Gray.”
According to a post on the Smith SJP Instagram, President Wille-LeBreton committed to asking for an emergency ACIR meeting and for the Board of Trustees to have representatives meet with the students. President Wille-LeBreton also called for a review of the incident with the staff member.
The alleged assault occurred on the first day of the sit-in. In a video posted by the Smith SJP Instagram, a man that SJP claims has publicly identified as Gray, appears to forcibly pull at a student who was reaching through a window. Baveja claimed that the student was reaching for “essential supplies [like] food, blankets, etc. from supporters outside.”
Activism in support of Palestine has taken place on college campuses across the country. The Guardian reports that on April 5, 18 students at Pomona College were arrested while protesting the removal of pro-Palestinian art on their campus. At Vanderbilt University, on March 27, 20 students were given probation after a sit-in protesting the removal of a question from student ballots that would have allowed students to vote on divestment from certain companies that support Israel.
At Mount Holyoke College, students have organized several campus wide events in support of Palestine. MHN previously reported that on Oct. 22, 2023, the student-led group MHC For Palestine and the Western Massachusetts Action Coalition gathered to condemn what they said was the College’s “lack of response or acknowledgment from the College as thousands of Palestinian civilians were killed at the hands of the Israeli military.” The protestors then rallied outside of President Holley’s house.
Mount Holyoke’s chapter of the international group Students for Justice in Palestine began holding meetings in early November. On Nov. 9, they hosted a rally, march, vigil and sit-in at Mary Lyon Hall in support of a ceasefire in Gaza. Five students occupied the building. The day after the sit-in, the group posted a statement on their Instagram account, reading, “This finite action has reached a positive and successful conclusion with a commitment from President Danielle Holley to meet one of our core goals and collaborate with SJP to realize our complete list of institutional goals.”
On April 9, two days after Smith SJP met with members of the Smith College Board of Trustees, President Wille-LeBreton confirmed in a letter that the students occupying College Hall had left. Their sit-in, which lasted 13 days, became the longest in Smith’s history, according to Smith SJP.
The group explained their decision to leave College Hall in an Instagram post.
“As we watched our momentum build throughout the sit-in, we increasingly realized that our movement was outgrowing College Hall. This sit-in has ignited a fire in our community, but a single building is too insular, too inaccessible, and not visible enough to hold the passion that we saw spreading through the community around us,” the post read.
The group plans to continue their advocacy work in other spaces around campus and in Northampton.