By Janis Siegel, Jewish Sound Correspondent
The Associated Students of Western Washington University’s board of directors, in an unprecedented move for a U.S. college or university, proactively and unanimously voted in June to reject all boycott, divestment, and sanctions movements at the school, a policy Israel-advocacy groups have endorsed.
Aimed at prohibiting discrimination against all national entities, the resolution, affirmed by all seven board members states that “the ASWWU shall not take positions advocating divestment from, boycott of, sanctioning, or ceasing collaboration with companies, products, or organizations due to their nation of origin.”
“We didn’t set out to do anything revolutionary, we set out to just live out our values,” outgoing ASWWU president Carly Roberts told The Jewish Sound. “We discussed a desire to be proactive, get in front of these discussions, and set down some positive precedents for people coming after us so if these discussions do come up they will have a positive framework from which to approach them.”
It took one Jewish student at WWU in Bellingham, Alysa Kipersztok, a StandWithUs Emerson Fellow who brought the document to the board. SWU is an international Israel advocacy group that has its U.S headquarters in Los Angeles.
“It was not difficult to persuade members of the Associated Students to pass the resolution,” Kipersztok told JTNews. “The resolution was discussed in two consecutive weekly meetings and took less than 30 minutes.”
Kipersztok said she hadn’t received much feedback from the student body on the passage of the resolution, but the handful of replies she did receive supported the vote.
Kipersztok objected to the boycott and divestment strategy against Israel on the grounds that it was divisive and unrepresentative of the views of the student body there, although the final language in the resolution makes no mention of Israel.
“She did not want to go through the same thing that the University of Washington had just gone through,” SWU Northwest regional director Robert Jacobs told The Jewish Sound, referencing the contentious divestment vote in May at the UW, where a resolution to adopt a divestment policy was voted down in a 59-8 vote with 11 abstentions.
“They used the national draft language for a resolution that SWU put together,” said Jacobs. “It was modified to make it fit better with WWU’s situation.”
The board took several weeks to deliberate on the resolution, according to Roberts, and ultimately decided that passing it would preserve the nature and the culture of the campus. The new policy will guide all future debate on campus when contentious political issues come up.
“As a liberal arts institution, we value taking complex issues and taking collaborative approaches to learning and to issues of the day and not making blanket judgments or blanket decisions,” Roberts said. “We acknowledged that Israel was the presenting situation that caused Alysa to bring it forward, but Israel is not mentioned anywhere in the document. It’s meant to apply to any situation where international conflict is in question.”
The resolution condemns the targeting of individual countries “based on their national origin or other identity-based features.”
Such movements, it continues, threaten the safety and inclusive atmosphere of the university and can promote hostility and isolation toward certain student groups. Boycott and divestment efforts against Israel continue to be debated on college campuses around the country, though earlier this year a similar resolution passed at the University of Oregon, which specifically stated that Israel would be protected from any divestiture campaigns.
StandWithUs Northwest plans to insert both the WWU and the UO resolutions into its materials package for students to use if they want to bring a similar document to their student organizations.
“We want students to take the lead,” said Jacobs. “We don’t tell students what they should do. We think Alysa and the board did an incredible job and we’re working with a number of student organizations and schools around the country right now. We believe that they know their campuses the best.”
The WWU resolution begins with the declaration that “universities should foster an environment of peace and promotion of global welfare,” and includes a statement of its ultimate purpose that “it is the mission of Western Washington University to bring together individuals of diverse backgrounds and perspectives in an inclusive, student-centered university.”
Jacobs said that SWU Northwest is looking forward to more actions like this one in Washington State and around the country to keep boycott and divestment resolutions from further dividing academic institutions.
“We’re working with any students,” Jacobs said, “that are trying to avoid the BDS divestment battle.”