Cal State LA president meets with student protesters; signals support for financial transparency

Cal State L.A. officials on Thursday, May 16, voiced support for students’ demands for increased transparency over the school’s investments, 16 days after students began their Gaza Solidarity Encampment on campus, joining dozens of pro-Palestine student activists at universities protesting and building encampments nationwide.

But the move was not enough for students to agree to end the encampment, which remains on campus just days before the university’s graduation ceremonies on Monday at the L.A. Convention Center.

The apparent nod to more transparency came during negotiations that took place Thursday morning inside the students’ encampment, with some CSULA officials present, including university President Berenecea J. Eanes.

Activists from the Cal State LA chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Faculty for Justice in Palestine were also present in the closed, live-streamed meeting, which saw around 250 people watching at its highest numbers.

Among the students’ list of demands in support of Gaza, CSULA officials were willing to disclose certain direct and indirect investments the school makes.

Such disclosures have underpinned demands for divestment from entities that do business with Israel amid the nation’s war with Hamas. Roughly 1,200 were killed when Hamas launched its surprise attack on Oct. 7, when thousands of militants rampaged across southern Israeli military bases and sleepy communities on a Jewish holiday. Another 250 were taken captive into Gaza, according to Israeli authorities. The ensuing war sparked by the assault has killed more than 34,700 Palestinians, according to local health officials.

“We support improving financial transparency around investment decisions,” Eanes said during the Cal State LA meeting.

While addressing investment, a need for increased disclosure and more, school officials said negotiations are ongoing. Activists and school officials plan to resume negotiations during a meeting on Friday, at a time to be determined, to iron out the rest of the demands.

Officials stopped short of saying the two sides had struck a deal Thursday.

“President Eanes met with the students and received their demands. She made no commitments,” said Erik Frost Hollins, Cal State LA’s executive director of strategic communications, in an emailed statement. “However, she has and continues to support greater financial transparency, and seeking a path for the university to speak out against violence and against targeting of innocent lives.

“The president does support increased financial transparency, and that includes the disclosures she said yes to in the meeting. We are reviewing the full scope of the demands on finances.”

Eanes reiterated to the students that she assumed presidency earlier this year, in January, and that had “just got here.”

“Red,” a spokesperson media liaison for SJP, who asked not to be named for safety reasons, said that Eanes “committed to disclosure” and “in the declaration demand, she agreed to ‘Part B’, which is the right to resist and amnesty.”

“I think negotiations went sort of as expected,” Red said. ”Much of the other demands that we were asking for (Eanes) didn’t really make a comment on that. And that’s because of her lack of knowledge of what is going on in this university and where funding is going.”

Before Thursday’s discussion on the encampment demands, various faculty and students gave speeches. One was a Palestinian student whose school project on family interviews for a Pan-African Studies class made a revelation.

“I discovered that all family members who ever lived in Palestine had either been massacred or died in exile. My family’s connection to our homelands has had been violently severed with our most recent loss of my uncle, murdered at an Israeli checkpoints,” the student, who didn’t want to be named due to safety concerns, said.

“It is an incredibly eerie feeling knowing that our school is bolstering funding for a genocide, and I am paying for it with tuition fees.”

Organizers with SJP at CSULA have demanded the university disclose its investments, divest from companies part of “the military industrial complex” and with ties to or funding for Israel, such as Hewlett-Packard, Sabra hummus company and others.

The student activists also want their schools to call for a permanent ceasefire, condemning what they called the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinian people.

Another demand calls for an end to policing on campus, including university campus police. The students protesters challenged the administration on issues of surveillance, arguing that Eanes missed the point of their demands for defunding campus police and reinvesting the money in student resources.

But that demand has been unsettling for university leadership.

“I get greatly concerned as a university leader, that this is where we are as a community,” Eanes said about students’ demands for little to no police presence on campus. She said the fact students don’t feel they can trust having these presences on campus is “gravely saddening” to her.

“There was a point when listing our demands addressing the military industrial complex, and she had a lack of knowledge as to what our ties are with the military industrial complex,” Red said. “And quite frankly, it’s a Google search way. It’s on our website.”

The negotiations on campus on Thursday came on the heels of the California State University placing Sonoma State campus President Ming-Tung “Mike” Lee on leave Wednesday after he agreed to protesters’ demands, including involving them in university decision processes and pursuing divestment from Israel.

In some cases, some campuses have made concessions without such repercussions.

For instance, California colleges, such as UC Riverside, UC Berkeley and Sacramento State have agreed to study divestment, echoing East Coast universities, but none have reportedly gone to the extent Lee had.

The message by Sonoma State’s Lee was issued “without the appropriate approvals,” said Mildred García, chancellor of the 23-campus CSU system, in a statement Wednesday.

“For now, because of this insubordination and consequences it has brought upon the system, President Lee has been placed on administrative leave,” García said.

Lee quickly issued an apology for the agreement he announced Tuesday after meetings with students who set up a campus encampment.

The mainly peaceful Cal State L.A. encampment first formed on May 1 and has grown to more than 30 tents, surrounded by a makeshift barrier, outside of the school’s gymnasium. Inside, students set up an altar with candles, framed photos, sage and food offerings to honor those killed in the Israeli attacks in Gaza.

Last week during a CSU campus-wide “Day of Action,” pro-Palestinian activists held a rally to oppose Israel’s invasion of Rafah in Gaza. Many students, staff and faculty members across different Cal State schools, including Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Fullerton, peacefully protested on their respective campuses and demanded divestment.

Earlier in May, “several buildings and state property were defaced with graffiti,” including some graffiti “carrying messages of hate and bigotry, including antisemitic rhetoric,” CSULA officials said on May 7.

A university spokesperson said that both King Hall and the University Student Union were “vandalized with the graffiti, which was removed the same day.” The school did not provide examples of the reported graffiti or antisemitic rhetoric.

Some graffiti reported and documented on the campus public property said “Free Gaza,” “Jesus was Palestinian” and “Free Palestine,” among spray-painted Palestinian flags and other messages. Graffiti was seen on a wall outside of the gym, part of the enclosed encampment. Student activists have denied that any vandalization on campus had antisemitic rhetoric.

Eanes and other administrators sent a community-wide message on May 5 regarding campus safety and resources amid the protests, emphasizing the university “unequivocally supports free speech” but will not tolerate “destruction of property, graffiti, erection of structures, blocking of walkways, fireworks” or any unlawful acts. Officials said they will continue to investigate.

“We are increasing security and investigating the individual or individuals responsible for the graffiti,” CSULA’s message said. “And in the interest of public safety, we are increasing security measures to act swiftly and decisively if further unlawful activity occurs.”

Police activity has remained limited on campus since the student-led pro-Palestine encampment and protests began, students say.

Cal State LA’s main commencement ceremonies, held at the L.A. Convention Center, are planned for Monday, May 20 and Tuesday, May 21. Cultural graduation celebrations are planned on campus starting this weekend.

Red, the Students for Justice in Palestine spokesperson, added that the upcoming graduation events this weekend and next week may be a motivating factor in the negotiations.

“I think what’s key to know is that we’ll be here until our demands are met regardless of whether there’s a graduation in there or not,” Red said.

Chants of “disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest” were heard as CSULA leaders left the encampment on Thursday.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.