UCLA Student Government Votes Down Divestment Resolution
In what was a close vote, UCLA's undergraduate student government voted early Wednesday morning against a resolution to divest from companies that allegedly violate Palestinian human rights.
With a 7-5 vote, the UCLA student body voted not to implement any boycott against Israel.
The Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) played a major part in drafting the resolution, and they said the resolution was a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolution. BDS is a global campaign that uses political and economic pressure in an attempt to attempt make Israel comply with international law.
Passage of the resolution at UCLA wouldn't have affected the way UCLA operates with companies at large, but it would have sent a message from the student body.
Pro-BDS resolutions have been passed at other UC campuses, and some students at USC see the vote at UCLA as a minor setback and a resolution for USC might be in the future.
"I think USC is very different," said Ifrah Sheikh, a member of SJP at USC, "from the UCLA case because it's a private university. The way that SJP exists here is definitely in a different format in the things we focus on, so I think that in the future, it's defintiely something we want to do."
"I feel much safer," said Rachel Lester, "knowing this [resolution] didn't pass. It would have been a very immoral thing to do, and I think human rights and morality won at UCLA."
To date, no formal BDS resolution has been submitted to USC's undergraduate student government.