Goucher Students’ “Vigil for Palestine” Makes Waves

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Vigil for Palestine attendees holding distributed posters. Photo by Sam Rose.

The gray, damp, weather reflected the somber gathering of students and faculty in front of the Mary Fisher Dining Hall on Friday, September 27th.

On the week of September 23rd, two emails were sent out to the undergraduate student body, faculty, and staff. The first email, sent on Wednesday, September 25th  was sent by the Office of Equity and Inclusive Excellence. It informed the student body about the policy surrounding posters and printed material, as well as the updated Campus Demonstration Policy, which the email stated was “reviewed this summer with student input.”

The second communication was sent by President Kent Devereaux, entitled “Goucher College and Free Speech,” reiterated the sentiments expressed in the previously mentioned email. It informed recipients that Goucher College “has a fundamental right to limit the time, place, and manner of demonstrations of free speech,” and that students who fail to follow these policies will face the consequences outlined in the Student Code of Conduct.

These emails set the expectations for the advertised “Vigil for Palestine,” the first organized student activist demonstration since the semester began. The Office of Equity and Inclusive Excellence’s email reported that the flyers for the event had been removed for not meeting the policy’s requirements. Despite this, flyers remained in some harder-to-spot locations around campus, and the Goucher Liberation Collective group advertised the vigil through their Instagram page.

The first slide of this aforementioned Instagram post was identical to the physical fliers that had been posted and removed. The second slide, which was visible online and in less widely circulated fliers, provided further detail and cause for the assembly. “Goucher college and Hillel International normalize this colonial and imperialist violence by hosting exchanges with Israeli students, without giving context to the state of Israel’s history of colonization and crimes against humanity in the Middle East,” a portion of the text read. 

Goucher Hillel sent out an email on September 11th, which informed Hillel members that on the 27th, the same day of the Vigil for Palestine, Goucher Hillel would be hosting visiting students from Sapir College, an Israeli public college.

At 1:00pm, around thirty students, professors, and faculty joined in a circle right outside the dining hall entrance, unfurling a banner bearing the Palestinian flag. The organizers of the event made use of an amplifier and microphone to address the crowd. The first speaker referred back to last year’s display of student activism, a series of posters put up by an artist with the pseudonym Decades and Oceans. The posters had been removed, but the remaining ones were passed out among the crowd, and students were encouraged to display them in their personal dorm window, where the Campus Demonstration Policy does not have sovereignty.

A member of the Goucher Liberation Collective, who organized the vigil, identified herself as Elise. She acknowledged over the microphone that the event does actively violate the campus demonstration, but claimed that the Collective publicized their contact information, gave five days of prior notice about the demonstration, and gave the college as means to contact the organizers directly. “It’s been difficult for me to live as if everything is normal,” Elise stated, explaining the necessity of the vigil to her.

Several speakers who did not identify themselves by name took to the microphone as well. One student discussed their Palestinian family history, and how they had not felt accepted as a Palestinian student at Goucher. “Once I joined the encampment, I found my people.”

Another student objected to the supposed “entirely false and cruel narrative about student protestors” that they felt the administration created following during the spring semester, and spoke out against the language that was being used in communications by President Devereaux, as well as by Goucher Hillel.

“They try to frame our opposition to war crimes as an act of ideological extremism,” said one speaker. “You cannot be neutral on the genocide of Palestinians.”

Identifying themselves as an alum from the class of 2024, another demonstrator read several selections of poetry. Among these selections was “The Perplexing Smiles of the Children of Palestine,” by Marcellus Williams, who was executed just days prior for a crime with no concrete forensic evidence linking him as the perpetrator. Another piece read was “Oh Rascal Children of Gaza,” by Khaled Juma.

The vigil remained in front of Mary Fisher Dining Hall, and did not relocate or enter any of the buildings. This was in contrast to the alleged preparations that Goucher employees were told to take, specifically workers who were normally stationed in Dorsey Center and Mary Fisher. Offices such as the Office of Admissions were accessible only by approved OneCards. 

One IT employee from the class of 2025, who chose to remain anonymous for the sake of their continued employment, spoke about the communication they had received prior to the vigil. “We got a message on [Microsoft] Teams saying that we were not to work in Dorsey Center today, and that we were supposed to work in the Ath.” 

Another IT employee from the class of 2025, anonymous for the same justification, detailed the student employees’ reaction to the announcement. “All staff are working from home because of a so-called demonstration,” the employee said. “When we found out about this, pretty much all of the student workers were laughing about it.”

After the speakers had finished, the names of deceased Palestinian families, killed by Israel’s offensive attacks, were read aloud for five minutes. This list started with adults, and finished with children and infants, including victims under one year old. “[Reading them] would take days to finish,” said the student reading the names, disputing the possibility of reading a full list of the deceased in Gaza. Candles were passed around the circle, though due to the inclement weather conditions, they were not lit.

Some individuals observed from outside the circle, or stood to the side. Thirty minutes into the vigil, a moment of silence began. This silence was shortly broken by Professor Zahi Khamis, professor-in-practice of the Arabic Studies department, who had been only observing until then. 

Requesting to end the silence, Professor Khamis informed the crowd that he is Palestinian, and that the work of the student activists is meaningful to him. “I want to honor you and ask you to keep doing what you are doing,” he said, “Without that, the genocide will go on to no end.” Professor Khamis concluded only with, “I love you all.”

Following the conclusion of the vigil and the conclusion of the week, no further communication was sent out concerning the Campus Demonstration Policy, or concerning free speech at Goucher.

By Sam Rose ’26

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