Amidst cloudy skies and chilly temperatures, a sizable group of Bryn Mawr students assembled at the site of last semester’s People’s College for the Liberation of Palestine for a speaker event dubbed the Disorientation. SJP’s first event of the year played on the concept of college orientation, with the goal of Disorientation being to educate new students on the Bryn Mawr student body’s rich history of student activism.
Proceedings got underway later afternoon on Monday, September 23. Returning SJP organizers from the People’s College ran the event, which began with a brief history of student activism at Bryn Mawr, briefly touching upon moments such as the 2020 strike and the recent People’s College. As organizers spoke, more keffiyeh-clad students began taking their seats in the rows of white chairs positioned next to Senior Row, while zines and other literature were passed around. As the event kicked off, one student noted campus safety officers seated in their vehicle not far from the demonstration.
These initial remarks were followed by an hour-long teach-in hosted by two professors from Villanova University’s history department: Dr. Elizabeth Kolsky and Dr. Hibba Abujideiri. Kolsky, a returning speaker from last spring, spoke first, beginning by reading some statistics from a document recently released by the Ministry of Health in Gaza that lists the names of the majority of Palestinian casualties from the war in Gaza since October 7, 2023. She then gave remarks on the historical context surrounding the ongoing war in Gaza, and recited the poem If I Must Die, written by the late Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer.
Kolsky’s comments were followed by remarks from Dr. Hibba Abujideiri, who expanded on Kolsky’s historical context by going more in depth about the history of Islamophobia. Like Kolsky, Abujideiri related the historical context of Palestine and the state of Israel to the ongoing war, looking to Algerian philosopher Frantz Fanon for a framework to speak on settler colonialism. Abujideiri also spoke about the Western media as it relates to the ongoing war in Gaza, linking the current moment to the misconceptions spread in Western media about the Iraq war in the early 2000s.
Since this was the first SJP event since the end of the People’s College last spring, the Disorientation focused on integrating new Bryn Mawr students into on-campus activism for Palestine, with one organizer stating that they “did not want the legacy of the encampment [the People’s College] to die.” Organizers hoped the Disorientation could serve as the initial step for new students to get involved with Bryn Mawr SJP, with one organizer stating that they “wanted to ensure that we [SJP] have a presence” in the coming school year.
The Disorientation came to a close with a Q&A session with two Bryn Mawr alumni who allegedly experienced disciplinary action in light of the establishment of the People’s College last spring, where new students were able to hear more in depth about the events of the end of last semester. Representatives of JVP also gave a brief overview of their organization.
As for next steps, one organizer said to “keep an eye out” for upcoming events, which include an SJP gen-bod meeting slated for later in the week.
