We all know of the pro-Palestinian encampment that occupied the CCNY campus during spring break. Though it’s now been dismantled, videos of protesters and tents on the very quad we eat lunch on fill our social media feeds and television screens. HSMSE’s student body has been grappling with intense emotion and discourse surrounding this encampment and its aftermath. As the student and faculty protesters installed themselves onto the quad from April 25th to 30th, they displayed a sign stating five demands in bold block letters: divest, boycott, solidarity, demilitarize, and a people’s CUNY. The structuring of these five demands is deliberate and has a historical precedent in student political activism at CCNY.

In 1969, 97% of CCNY’s students were white, despite the college having been founded to educate marginalized groups. Proposed budget cuts also threatened funding for the SEEK program, which aided the economically disadvantaged and academically unprepared. Outraged at the college’s lack of representation and inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, Black and Puerto Rican students presented five demands: (1) a separate school of Black and Puerto Rican studies; (2) a separate orientation program for Black and Puerto Rican freshmen; (3) a voice for SEEK students in all aspects of the SEEK Program; (4) an incoming freshman class representative of the Black and Puerto Rican population in New York City high schools; and (5) a requirement that education majors learn Black and Puerto Rican history and take Spanish classes. Students occupied 17 buildings and closed the South Campus for over two weeks to fight for their voices to be heard. Although they were almost entirely nonviolent, they endured harsh police brutality and pushback from the administration. Eventually, the protests were successful, and CCNY implemented an open admissions policy that greatly improved diversity. This history is crucial to contextualizing current-day events, as pro-Palestinian student activists modeled their five demands after those from 1969.