UNC faculty criticize discipline for demonstrators. Will they withhold grades in protest?

A group that organized pro-Palestinian protests on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus last week is calling on faculty and teaching assistants to withhold grades to “demand amnesty” for students facing disciplinary actions.

It was unclear Monday morning how many instructors are joining the call to withhold grades, though university leaders told deans and department chairs that they had received “concerns from students whose instructors have informed them they will withhold grades as part of a protest.”

But in another effort to have proceedings dismissed against students, hundreds of faculty are now speaking out against university administrators’ actions.

Three dozen protesters were either detained or arrested at a “Gaza solidarity encampment” April 30 and charged with trespassing, a misdemeanor. The 30 demonstrators who were detained — 10 of which were UNC students — were given citations and released on campus. The six demonstrators who were arrested — three of whom were UNC students — face additional misdemeanor charges, including resisting, delaying or obstructing an officer.

The UNC chapter of Students for Justice for Palestine (SJP) — which organized the encampment and is now suspended “on an interim basis” by the university for possible violations of campus policies — has said in social media posts that more than a dozen students have been suspended from the university in connection to the protests. UNC, in information about the protests that is posted online, has confirmed that students have been “disciplined,” but it is unclear how many students are affected or exactly what consequences they face.

In a letter set to be delivered to interim UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts and Provost Chris Clemens Monday afternoon, more than 700 professors state that they are calling “for accountability for the administrators whose decisions during the protest dishonored the university’s noble traditions of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and respecting students’ rights to protest.”

A news release accompanying the letter stated that the faculty who signed the letter “call for immediate and full amnesty for all the students facing charges and suspensions.”

In a separate action, UNC SJP is seeking to use withheld grades to pressure administrators to reverse student discipline. The group said in a news release that instructors are “withholding grades and demanding the UNC-CH administration grant all protesters amnesty.” The move is reminiscent of similar actions nearly six years ago as the university dealt with the controversy surrounding Silent Sam, the Confederate monument that previously stood on campus and for years was the subject of on-campus protests and outcry.

Beth Moracco, chair of the UNC faculty, told The News & Observer by text message she had seen “messaging” on social media about the call to withhold grades, but had not received direct communication from any faculty who were planning to join the effort.

In their Monday email to deans and department chairs, Provost Chris Clemens and UNC Graduate School Dean Beth Mayer-Davis said the provost’s office “will support sanctions for any instructor who is found to have improperly withheld grades, but is our hope we can resolve this matter amicably and without harm to students.”

“We strongly support the right of faculty and graduate students to express their opinions freely but there are better ways to do this than hurting our students and abrogating our contract with the people of North Carolina who support our university,” Clemens and Mayer-Davis wrote.

Faculty allege police created ‘unsafe climate’ on campus

UNC SJP organized the four-day “Gaza solidarity encampment” April 26 to protest the ongoing Israel-Hamas war and to call on the university to disclose and divest from any investments it holds in Israel through its endowment.

The effort lasted four days before administrators demanded protesters disperse and disband the encampment. The call, issued at 5:30 a.m. April 30 with a 6 a.m. deadline for protesters to comply, was followed by police from universities across the UNC System clashing with demonstrators as they detained and arrested 36 people.

Video of the detentions from ABC11, The News & Observer’s newsgathering partner, showed officers taking some protesters to the ground and holding others against the ground. It was unclear from the video what led to those actions. The university said in a news release after the encampment had been disbanded that “protesters attempted to block the UNC Police vehicles by standing in front of them and throwing items at officers.”

The faculty who signed the letter to administrators allege that the administration’s decision to bring in police escalated the otherwise peaceful protest.

“The student encampment located on Polk Place was an example of the kind of peaceful free expression that our university claims to uphold,” the letter states. “Free speech is often challenging; it can make people uncomfortable, and it can grow heated. But until that speech crosses the line into violence or obstruction, it must be protected, even at the cost of discomfort or patches of grass yellowed by tents.”

“The administration’s decision to call in police from across the state to storm our students’ encampment at 5:30 in the morning on Tuesday, April 30, created a militarized and unsafe climate on the UNC campus. It subjected the very students it is charged with protecting to violence and trauma.”

Police and protesters clashed a second time Tuesday when demonstrators broke down the barriers keeping them out of the area where the encampment previously stood and raised the Palestinian flag in place of the American one on the Polk Place flagpole.

During the flagpole incident, in which police and Roberts marched onto the quad to disperse protesters and restore the American flag, police used pepper spray to disperse protesters from the area. Images and videos also show police hitting a protester in a wheelchair with a metal barrier on their way to the pole and pulling another demonstrator by their hair once they arrived. Protesters threw water on Roberts and police as they worked to rehang the flag.

The incident followed a silent vigil and rally hosted by SJP and the campus chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP), both of which were also generally peaceful.

“I am devastated that students could lose everything — be deported, be unable to graduate, lose family support — when they were simply exercising their right to protest,” English professor Elyse Crystall said in the news release sent with the letter. “The administration, in choosing to disrupt this peaceful protest with militarized police, have made this campus unsafe.”

Withholding grades to ‘demand amnesty’

While the faculty who are sending the letter to Roberts and Clemens are calling “for immediate and full amnesty” for students facing criminal charges and academic discipline, it does not specify — beyond sending the letter — how the group will demand such actions from administrators.

A news release sent Sunday evening by UNC SJP said that the campus FJP chapter, UNC Graduate Students for the Liberation of Palestine and community members were joining the students’ call to withhold grades.

On Monday, UNC SJP was circulating a petition through its Instagram account for students to voice their support of instructors who choose to participate in withholding grades. The petition included a template students could use to ask their professors to join the effort.

“We want to make it very clear that academic suspensions are completely within the purview of the university, and suspensions can be dropped entirely based on the university’s discretion,” the petition stated. “As undergraduate students, we stand in full support of our faculty and graduate students who will withhold our grades until the University grants full amnesty for our suspended undergraduate and graduate students.”

The call to withhold final grades comes at the end of the spring semester and academic year, as final exams are underway and the university’s annual spring commencement ceremony is just days away.

Final grades are generally due 72 hours after a course’s final exam. Grades for courses that do not hold a final exam were due Thursday. Grades for courses that held exams on the first day of the spring exam period were due Sunday.

If a professor does not input grades by May 14, an “NR,” or “not reported,” will be posted to the grade roster in its place. The temporary grade, which is “administratively assigned” by the university, can be replaced with a permanent grade until “the last day of classes for the same term one year later,” according to the UNC Graduate School Handbook.

Trustee disagrees with call to withhold grades

Marty Kotis, a member of the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, opposes the call to withhold grades and told The N&O he believes that doing so could be “grounds for termination” for professors and instructors who participate in the effort.

“If someone wants to punish all students because they want to make a political statement regarding Palestine, they should lose their jobs,” Kotis said. “They’re failing to perform their duties as a professor if they’re withholding grades.”

Kotis previously served on the UNC System Board of Governors and in 2018 was critical of a similar call among some teaching assistants and faculty to withhold grades in protest of UNC-Chapel Hill’s then-proposal to build a $5.3 million history center on campus to house Silent Sam after protesters tore down the statue. That call, which about 80 instructors joined, did not materialize after the Board of Governors rejected the plan.

Kotis said the 2018 plan to withhold grades would have punished “an innocent group in an effort to force the issue on Silent Sam.”

“It could have could have affected people who are graduating and applying for a job or military positions,” Kotis said. “And so it wasn’t appropriate for them to do then, and it’s certainly not appropriate for them to do now.”

Clemens and Mayer-Davis cited similar concerns in their message to faculty leaders.

“These students depend on the timely submission of their grades for graduation, jobs, and athletic eligibility, and it is part of the required duties of all faculty and graduate TAs to submit grades by the registrar deadlines,” they stated.

The petition to garner student support for withholding grades anticipated similar criticism from administrators regarding the effort’s potential impacts on students, including those who need their final grades in order to receive their diplomas.

“A common response we can expect from administration is that this act of grade withholding is wrong because it punishes the undergraduate body. ‘Why are you punishing your students?’ is the false rhetoric we can expect to hear. We as undergraduates absolutely reject this narrative and stand fully with this action for instructors to hold their leverage against the university,” the petition states.

It is unclear exactly what “sanctions” instructors could face if they withhold grades. But in 2018, then-UNC Provost Bob Blouin wrote to university deans that withholding grades would violate faculty and instructors’ “instructional responsibilities and result in serious consequences for employees who chose to do so,” The Washington Post reported. Blouin also wrote that such action could expose the university and those who participate in the effort “to legal claims for the harm they cause to students.”

In the template provided to students who ask their professors to withhold grades, students are encouraged to recognize the potential adverse impacts such action could have on faculty and write: “... myself and my fellow students will do anything in our power to stand with you and fight back against any retaliation you might face.”

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