Tovia Smith
NPR, Aug. 12, 2024
“I could not care less about students busting up some windows when they’re getting degrees revoked for protesting the killing of human beings!”
To many pro-Palestinian campus activists, it was a crushing coincidence of the calendar. Just as nationwide protests over the Israel-Hamas war were coming to a crescendo, the spring semester ended and the students cleared out. The sounds of bullhorns and chanting suddenly went silent.
“It was definitely very jarring,” says junior Marie Adele Grosso, a student organizer at Barnard College and Columbia University. “I wanted so badly to still be in New York. I wanted to be there organizing,” she says, “just trying not to lose that momentum.”
Hundreds were arrested at the encampments, including Gross, who was taken in twice. Like many students, her criminal charges have since been dropped. And her school suspension was downgraded to probation. Now she’s among scores of students around the nation using the summer to strategize and plan for what their activism might look like in the fall. “We’re not going to just be copying encampment, encampment, encampment,” Grosso says. “We will be doing whatever actions we choose, escalations if that’s necessary. We will do what is necessary.”
Speaking from her home in Michigan, Grosso says she now spends her days in remote meetings with students from Barnard and Columbia, as well as engaging with local student and community activists in Michigan. It’s how many other students across the U.S. are keeping busy, as well.
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