ITHACA, NY — A group of more than 100 pro-Palestinian protesters pushed through a blockade of Cornell University Police officers and disrupted a career fair on September 18 to continue demanding that the university sever financial and professional ties with corporate weapons manufacturers that support the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Gaza Strip – two of which were hiring at the fair.
Student activists from the Coalition for Mutual Liberation (CML), which has led the protests since the conflict erupted last year, gathered supporters at Day Hall, the university’s administration building, at 1.30pm on Wednesday.
They then marched to the Statler Hotel, where the job fair was being held, and announced plans to confront representatives from global defense contractor Boeing and American defense technology company L3Harris.
Five Cornell University police officers met the students at the hotel entrance, and four or five more officers followed after the protesters as they tried to force their way inside.
Once inside, the group moved to a second-floor ballroom, where interview-ready students with resumes and legal pads moved from table to table mingling with managers and hotel staff.
Protesters filled the room with chants, cymbals, drums and bells, and proceeded directly to Boeing’s recruiting table. Some protesters removed the decorative plastic tablecloths and replaced them with a letter titled “War Crimes and Genocide Indictment by the People’s Court” and a list of the total deaths of children under the age of one in Gaza, Cornell University’s student newspaper, The Daily Sun, reported.
Police tried but were unable to stop protesters from dismantling a Boeing recruiting table. Organizers provided pots and pans in the day hall for attendees to use at the event.
About 10 minutes later, other students began to join the growing group of chanting protesters, and as more police joined in, at least 15 more were ordered to form a semicircle around the group to contain it.
Meanwhile, company representatives and vendors hurriedly cleared their tables and began filing out of the banquet hall along with the interview-ready students who had attended the job fair.
The group of at least 150 protesters, far larger than the number who had been at the Day Hall an hour earlier, began to leave the ballroom at the direction of police, but only after most of the vendors’ tables had been dismantled and their representatives had left.
The Ithaca Voice did not witness any arrests made throughout the protest, either in the hotel ballroom or outside Day Hall before the group marched.
Both Boeing and L3Harris were nominated in a student-wide referendum in April, in which Cornell undergraduates who participated voted overwhelmingly in favor of the university divesting from companies supporting the ongoing war in Gaza and calling for a permanent ceasefire.
This is the second large pro-Palestinian demonstration organized by student activists at Cornell since the fall semester began in late August.
Protesters are continuing a nearly year-long campaign to demand that the university meet a list of demands that CML announced earlier this year after organizing and maintaining a pro-Palestinian encampment in Cornell’s arts building for nearly two weeks in April.
Cornell University Vice President for University Affairs Joel Malina released a statement following the incident, calling the actions “shameful.”
“Cornell Police officers were pushed and shoved, university guests felt intimidated, and students were denied an opportunity to experience a career fair,” Malina wrote. “Such behavior is unacceptable, violates university policy, and is illegal.”
After the statement was released, CML organizers claimed in an Instagram story that Cornell “purposefully did not email this statement to students in order to hide their oppressive actions.”
Malina said in a statement that Cornell Police were “working to identify” those who violated university rules and that the students would be reported to the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards, which would take “immediate action, up to and including suspension.”
The faculty and staff members involved will be reported to human resources and “may be subject to criminal charges,” Malina wrote.