PHILADELPHIA — At Rutgers University-New Brunswick, a three-day-old pro-Palestinian encampment came down peacefully Thursday after successful negotiations between the administration and protesters.

Brown University, an Ivy League institution like the University of Pennsylvania, and Northwestern University had similar success earlier this week.

But Penn remains at a stalemate with protesters occupying about 35 tents on College Green, with tensions mounting and protest activity escalating, prompting the university to ask Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s office for additional police resources if needed.

Negotiations between the university and protesters have gone nowhere, and it’s not clear if there’s room for a compromise.

Student protesters at Penn on Friday said the university hasn’t really offered any reasonable compromises to their demands, which include disclosing university investments, agreeing to divest financial holdings that support Israel’s military effort and promising not to pursue discipline against encampment participants.

“The university is refusing to engage in a process of amnesty for student protesters, and they are still threatening disciplinary action and disbandment” of the encampment, said Taja Mazaj, 22, a Penn senior political science and English major from Montgomery County. “We would really like to move forward but we hope the university can move forward with good faith negotiations, which we feel has not happened yet.”

University leaders have met twice with student protesters over the last week, unable to move the needle, as the encampment nears the close of day nine and finals are slated to start Tuesday.

“We communicated that the encampment must disband and offered accommodation to continue their protest in ways that do not conflict with safety and policy,” a university spokesperson said. “We also stated our desire to move beyond a posture of demand vs. counterdemand and towards shared opportunities that help create a more inclusive, respectful campus environment.”

Eliana Atienza, 19, a sophomore environmental studies major from the Philippines, said interim President J. Larry Jameson offered to start a committee “to look into the feasibility” of students’ demands, but she asserted that’s not enough.

A compromise could be reached “if they went through with some of our demands and not involved us in endless meetings and task forces and discussions and committees,” Atienza said. “It would change things to see tangible action from the university, big emphasis on tangible action.”

...continued

©2024 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.