A divestment measure passed Jan. 29 by the U.C. Davis student senate was overturned on Feb. 19 following a legal challenge brought before the Associated Students U.C. Davis court.
The court is responsible for interpreting the wording of the student constitution and reviewing enacted legislation. Voting 5-0 (with one abstention) to rescind the measure, it found that the senate had violated the ASUCD constitution and labeled the divestment resolution “a political document that … does not affect student welfare to enough of an extent to make it a primarily student focused document.”
The court also rejected the wording of the resolution, which defined divestment as the will of the ASUCD, a too-sweeping view that it said failed to take into account dissenting views. Instead, the court ruled that the language in such a measure should refer to “the view of the ASUCD Senate.”
The pro-Israel group StandWithUs issued a statement congratulating U.C. Davis senior Jonathan Mitchell, who initiated the legal challenge, calling the strategy “a model for all students [that] hopefully will set a precedent for other campuses facing such bigoted resolutions.”
ASUCD senator Azka Fayyaz, who voted in favor of last month’s resolution calling on the U.C. Board of Regents to divest from corporations that “aid in the Israeli occupation of Palestine,” said the reversal did not undermine the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
“It was victorious in what it was trying to do,” she told U.C. Berkeley’s university newspaper, the Daily Californian, “build coalitions that work against injustice, or at least raise awareness.”
Tensions had run high on and around the Davis campus after the senate passed the divestment measure in an 8-2 vote. After the vote, Fayyaz posted two Facebook photos with the captions “Hamas & Sharia law have taken over UC Davis” and “Israel will fall.”
Two days later a pair of swastikas were found spray-painted on the property of the Davis chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi, a largely Jewish fraternity. — j. staff