Updated February 6, 2025 at 5:03 p.m.
Pro-Palestinian student organizers at Michigan State University say they are disappointed, but not surprised, after no members of the university’s Board of Trustees attended a town hall meeting they had planned.
The MSU Hurriya coalition has called for the university to divest from financial holdings in Israel.
Jesse Estrada White, an organizer for the coalition, said the group had received verbal confirmation that at least four trustees – Mike Balow, Dennis Denno, Brianna Scott and Rema Vassar – were planning to attend the town hall.
“Obviously, they don’t feel any shame, and they still canceled on us,” Estrada White said.
A university spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
But Estrada White said that doesn’t mean the event was for nothing.
About 100 students marched to Cowles House, where university president Kevin Guskiewicz lives, leading chants and taping a list of questions and demands to the front door.
Organizers also called on the attendees to attend the Board of Trustees meeting scheduled for Friday morning.
“We had maybe 200 people show up to this. I want to see them get involved,” Estrada White said. “We’re going to keep building this movement, and it’s going to get bigger and bigger, until they can’t ignore us anymore.”
Michigan State University arrested five students from the coalition, including Estrada White, last fall for refusing to leave the Hannah Administration Building.
While the University of Michigan is being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union for issuing trespass bans to some pro-Palestinian student protesters, Estrada White said he isn’t yet concerned about that possibility in East Lansing.
“MSU is a different playbook,” Estrada White said. “MSU’s playbook has always been ignore, lie, run; U of M’s is beat down with force, MSU takes a different approach.”