TAMUCC Encampment: Disclose, Divest, Denounce, Defend.
In response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, students in America (in line with the BDS movement) began investigating their universities/institutions contributions to Israel. Encampments started at Columbia University and the movement quickly spread throughout the student body within the U.S., as well as abroad. As the CCTXPSC witnessed the police brutality displayed at the University of Texas in Austin in an egregious response to student protestors whose demands were justified and within reason, we were moved to take action. Despite the fact that Corpus Christi is a small conservative town, we were amazed to see the community support for our demands for TAMUCC, as well as our communities collective desire for an end to the genocide in Palestine.
For 3 consecutive days protests were held in front of the TAMUCC campus entrance. All the while, students and community members were hard at work researching. Inevitably, the universities ties to Israel surfaced and once it did, an encampment was sparked on April 28th, 2024 at TAMUCC. The encampment lasted until May 8th, with students demands released as followed:
Student Demands
Disclosure, Divestment, Sanctions
In 2019, Texas A&M accepted $11M from HP to build a new Hewlett Packard Enterprise Center for Computer Architecture Research, which studies, contributes research to, and creates autonomous systems and robotics. At the HP center, students have been studying autonomous robotic dogs-- these same robotic dog technologies are used by Israel against Palestinians. Alarmingly, The Department of Homeland Security also utilizes these robotics at the borders to detect humans trying to cross.
As recently as April 3rd, 2024, TAMU partnered with the University of Pennsylvania to study the robotic dogs for use on the moon during Project Lassie, however, we know that UPENN sells these dogs to Israel-we demand disclosure and divestments from Texas A&M. In 2023, TAMU released video footage from their STARLAB of the automated dog, 'SPOT', which was made in collaboration with Boston Dynamics, thus confirming their relationship with TAMU.
Both HP and Boston Dynamics have long been BDS targets due to their direct complicity in creating technologies that discriminate, harm, and contribute to the genocide of Palestinians. We demand divestment, disclosure, and sanctions from A&M's relationships with HP and Boston Dynamics. We are also demanding that A&M align with and support #NoTechForApartheid.
2. Denounce
Texas A&M was founded as an institution that fosters creativity, knowledge, & technique, pursuing "the maintenance of freedom of inquiry & an intellectual environment nurturing the human mind and spirit." As students, we have a responsibility to preserve this ideal through active engagement in our communities. We see the current administration's lack of denouncement & silence on the genocide currently taking place in occupied Palestine as a betrayal, not only to our University's mission and values, but to the very idea of the University itself as the archetypal site of intellectual freedom.
TAMU-CC protesters experienced a hate crime by a student who approached the demonstration site with a knife, yelled ‘Terrorist” at our Palestinian member, and cut down our flags. The University’s ‘response’ to these protests was passed through mass email and included the following: “Central to both the Bill of Rights and principles of higher education is the right to freedom of expression. It is crucial that while exercising this freedom, we do not impede the rights of others, disrupt educational activities, or break the law. ” This is a non-response that fails to mention the hate crime on May 1st,
or subsequent encounters with agitators. We call for TAMU-CC to denounce this hate crime as well as the genocide that so strongly opposes our TAMU (CC) values.
3. Defend
We call for the TAMU system to condemn the violent and brutal persecution of peaceful protestors in higher educational institutions taking place all over the country, more specifically the crackdown against our own Texas campuses that contradicts the mission of the University as a center of intellectual freedom (e.g., the University of Texas-Austin, University of Texas-Dallas, University of North Texas). We call on the TAMU system to defend students who have been protesting for an end to the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, and to defend students, staff, and faculty who are being silenced, punished, reprimanded, and/or targetted for speaking out about Israel’s genocide on Gaza.
