By Lauren Frank and Sam Gauntt
University of Maryland students will vote whether to call for the University System of Maryland Foundation and University of Maryland College Park Foundation to divest from certain security, military and defense companies during April’s SGA election.
The Student Government Association passed an emergency bill Wednesday, 25-5-2, to hold the nonbinding campuswide vote. The ballot question comes months after more than 650 students signed a petition demanding the SGA add the question to its 2025 election ballot.
This university’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter circulated the petition for the campuswide vote in November. The petition for the referendum was created days after a nearly identical SGA resolution failed to advance.
The referendum will ask the student body whether the university system foundation and UMCP foundation should divest from companies that “consistently, knowingly and directly facilitate and enable state violence and repression, war and occupation, or severe violations of international law and human rights” in places including Palestine, Myanmar and the Philippines.
If passed, the ballot question calls on SGA to begin lobbying the university system foundation and UMCP foundation to divest from companies that may be “implicated” in human rights violations, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon.
[UMD students petition SGA for campuswide vote on divestment from defense companies]
Similar resolutions failed to advance in the SGA in 2017, 2019 and last spring, The Diamondback previously reported.
Petition organizer Adam Ghannoum said the campuswide vote is a “call for justice.” The referendum’s results will better represent the student body’s demands than the previous resolutions, Ghannoum added.
“It’s important that the student body is heard, and that their voice gets out there,” the senior information science and operations management and business analytics major said. “We believe that the student body is overwhelmingly in favor of justice and sees the validity of our moral claim to vote in support of it.”
During Wednesday’s general body meeting, the SGA was initially presented with a petition calling on the body to hold the campuswide referendum. After further discussion and multiple voting rounds, the SGA eventually approved a measure to turn the petition into an emergency bill, which the body passed that same night.
Referendums must be submitted to the SGA’s elections commission at least 10 days before the April 1 election — not including spring break — according to the SGA’s speaker pro tempore Leonard Fomin.
The petition was introduced as an emergency bill to bypass the SGA committee process and meet the 10-day requirement, the sophomore government and politics major added.
In response to The Diamondback’s request for comment, the university system and university system foundation referred to the foundation’s website about sustainable investments.
In a document dated Feb. 17, the university system foundation said it will consider divestment inquiries from a university’s president’s office or “official governance entity,” such as the SGA.
According to the document, a sustainability subcommittee within the foundation will review the inquiries using several factors, including:
- The investments’ size and importance
- The potential harms of divestment to the endowment’s portfolio
- The “reputational risk” of continuing the investment
After reviewing the inquiry, the foundation may maintain the investment, divest or defer the decision to monitor the inquiry in the future, the document stated.
[UMD community members relieved, uncertain after ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas]
Discussions about divestment have increased at this university since Hamas killed about 1,200 people and took about 250 people hostage during its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, according to the Associated Press. Israel declared war on Hamas the next day and its military forces have killed more than 48,000 Palestinians in Gaza since, the Associated Press reported Thursday.
Israel and Hamas agreed to a temporary ceasefire deal in January, according to the Associated Press. The deal’s first phase ended last week as both parties have yet to negotiate new terms, the outlet reported.
In a statement to The Diamondback, this university’s Jewish Student Union wrote that divestment has been a “controversial, divisive issue” that has harmed this university’s community members.
“We will act to oppose any polarizing, bigoted attempt to conduct a targeted attack against Jewish students at this university,” the statement read.
Uriel Appel, the president of this university’s Students Supporting Israel chapter, said he is frustrated that this university continues to have the same fight over divestment.
“If you want to think in the spirit of democracy, then stop putting this bill up,” the junior neuroscience major said.
Appel said the bill is designed to specifically target investments in Israel. The ballot question’s language is “deceptive” because it does not name Israel directly, he added.
Holden Zeidman, a member of this university’s Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine chapters, said the campuswide vote will be more accessible for students and has a better chance of passing compared to resolutions in past semesters.
The senior mathematics and secondary education major said the vote will be an opportunity to tell this university that students are not content with it “being complicit in genocide.”
This university’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter wrote in a statement to The Diamondback on Thursday that it is “eager” to see the divestment question on the SGA’s 2025 ballot.
“It is our moral imperative as students to stand for justice and call for divestment from corporations profiting off of global human rights violations,” the statement read.
The UMCP foundation deferred to this university in response to The Diamondback’s request for comment. This university deferred to the university system.
News editors Marijke Friedman and Akshaj Gaur contributed to this story.
