FAQs
We are #WarwickOccupy, a collective fighting for an anti-racist and liberated university for all. We are a group of politically engaged individuals, who feel unable to be bystanders in the face of injustice. The majority of us are from Liberation Societies on campus including:
An occupation is an effective method of protest which involves taking hold of a public/symbolic site (the SU building) and establishing a (semi-)permanent residence in order to achieve socio-political change.
Yes. There have been several occupations before. The first was in 1975 where an occupation of the university resulted in the creation of the Student Union Building. There were subsequent occupations of the university in 2014 and 2016.
But the SU has never been occupied before; it’s very rare that an SU is so out of touch with the student body that the only way to enact change is so dramatic. And so in 2019, we have #WarwickOccupy.
We are occupying because it is clear that the Uni, the SU and Campus Security consistently fail in their duty of care towards marginalised students and staff on a structural and institutional level. The occupation followed a protest on Tuesday 19th November over an event hosted by JISoc, where a retired IDF Colonel welcomed to speak on campus. We seek to transform the SU, as well as the wider University in order to ensure that we leave behind a better campus for all future students.
The IDF routinely brutalise Palestinians, with UN reports consistently showing that they use disproportionate force and indiscriminately attack civilians, including children. These are war crimes, in direct violation of international law and by focusing on the ‘humanitarian’ operations of the IDF in the region, they are whitewashing and attempting to legitimise the violent colonialist reality of occupation and ethnic replacement. We seek to protest all illegal military action and colonialism wherever it takes place.
Additionally, the event was hosted in affiliation StandWithUs, an organisation that is Islamophobic and has been funded by various individuals linked with Islamophobic organisations. In allowing Col. Dror and the organisation StandWithUs onto campus, the University has failed to ensure a safe environment for Muslim, Arab and Palestinian students and staff. We do not believe StandWithUs truly care about the fate of Syrian refugees; their event serves the purpose of improving the image of Israel and providing a false legitimation for the actions of the Israeli state and IDF on an international level.
The protests began due to the inaction of the SU and the Sabbs’ elected bodies in representing the views and concerns of their students, as they failed to shut down the visit of Colonel Dror. Based on the current SU guidelines, a speaker should not be allowed on campus if they pose a threat to the wellbeing of students. Colonel Dror’s presence on campus, as well as that of the organisation StandWithUs, pose a clear threat to the wellbeing of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students. Since the SU failed to uphold their own rules, the occupation is a way to hold them to account. The occupation is to ensure the elected Sabbs are working according to the will of those who voted them in and supporting the general student body as they are supposed to, instead of being swayed and diverted by senior bodies not in the public eye.
Our demands will be released on Monday 25th November.
Our occupation began on Tuesday the 19th of November.
We will be staying until all the terms of our demands are accepted by the Student Union and the University.
There are many ways to support us: