At Wednesday’s Board of Governor’s (BoG) meeting, student governors were still not satisfied with the administrations recommendations made about the events of Sept. 9. The administration’s recommendations include better security for any future events, which will ensure the health and the safety of the students.
“The Hall Building is a poor venue for these types of events,” said one BoG member. “We will have some relief when the Science Complex opens, in addition to a student center somewhere on the SGW campus,” he added.
However CSU president Sabine Friesinger’s frustrations were made apparent when she stated that the administration is not taking enough responsibility for what happened. “Students that went through the protest have taken responsibility for what happened and I do not see the administration taking any responsibility,” she said.
A report has been submitted which includes more recommendations which have been made to asses what happened and what steps should be taken to prevent this from ever happening again. “During the week of Sept. 9, we knew that students were going to try and stop Mr. Netanyahu from speaking, we knew what was planned by the protesters,” Friesinger stated.
Posters were even put up around the ground floor of the Hall Building telling students that a protest would be taking place. Accusations flew around the room as to whether the administration should have done more, since they knew that something might happen. “We thought that the protests were going to be peaceful, and we were wrong,” said Rector Frederick Lowy.
Vice-Rector Services Michael Di Grappa assured the CSU that agreements had been broken in respect to the protesters.
“There had been agreements as to where the protesters could be and they [the protesters] had already been involved in 16 other protests and they had always complied, however this time they did not,” he said. “We took reasonable precautions under the circumstances,” he concluded.
The issue of the university’s current reputation also came under heat. “The consequences for this university have been huge, namely our reputation,” said one member promptly.
The BoG concluded that the events of Sept. 9 have been discussed at length and that it should be put in the past and that the administration will continue to find solutions to ongoing problems.