The Student Assembly voted on Thursday to indefinitely shelve a resolution calling on the Board of Trustees to cut financial ties with nine weapons manufacturers after several Assembly members expressed concern.
Resolution 8: Calling for Divestment from War Weapons Manufacturers followed up on a referendum last spring that saw most undergraduate voters vote for the University to divest from weapons manufacturers arming Israel, including Boeing and Lockheed Martin, among others. That referendum was ultimately rejected by former President Martha Pollack in May.
The resolution was sponsored by S.A. Undesignated Representative At-Large Karys Everett ’25 and Undesignated At-Large Representative Imani Rezaka ’25. In an interview with The Sun, Everett voiced disappointment in the S.A.’s decision.
“I am unsurprised that there is little credibility in the Assembly as a whole when students have repeatedly stepped forward, repeatedly stepped up, did the referendum last year, expressed how they felt and what they needed to see from the Student Assembly. And those actions were not taken,” Everett told The Sun after the S.A. moved to postpone the resolution indefinitely.
Unlike the referendum, which was targeted toward the war in Gaza, the resolution was not intended for one specific state, the sponsors said.
This was brought into question by College of Engineering Representative Jeffery Lederman ’26 who pointed out that a line in the resolution alluded to a weapons manufacturer supplying an unnamed state with missiles and bombs. Lederman asked the sponsors to clarify what the state being referred to was since the resolution claimed not to be targeted at any specific entity.
“There is no single state that is funded by these weapons manufacturers. There are many states,” Everett said. Everett proposed a motion to amend the typo, but the S.A. did not pursue the matter further.
Several Assembly members called into question last spring’s divestment referendum, which the resolution used as evidence that divestment was the majority opinion of the student body.
Last spring’s referendum stated that Israel had committed a “plausible genocide” in Gaza, alluding to a widely misinterpreted International Court of Justice decision in South Africa’s case against Israel. Students With Disabilities Representative Michael Scali ’26 said the assertion there was a plausible genocide in Gaza was unfounded, given that the ICJ did not actually judge whether the claim was likely or not yet. That wording heavily swayed how students voted, he added.
“Trying to speculate on what specific aspects of the referendum students were responding to is unproductive,” Everett said. “It is our part to represent student interests, and students have expressed these weapons [manufacturers] should be looked into.”
Brooks School of Public Policy Representative Eeshaan Chaudhuri ’27 proposed repolling the student body on the issue of divestment to clear up any misunderstandings about where students currently stand on the matter.
Everett clarified that referendums are initiated by students by obtaining at least three percent of the undergraduate student body’s signatures. She also responded to criticism that the referendum was not representative of the student body because it only saw 46.77 percent student participation.
“We have less than 40 percent of students voting in our own [S.A.’s] elections,” Everett said. “It’s safe to assume that we have numbers that are in line with and mirror our societal patterns when it comes to voting.”
Several S.A. members also questioned the timing of the resolution, noting that it comes during the week of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, and the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel, which marked the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
“Why are you so intent on having this [the resolution] on Jewish holidays?” asked Undesignated At-Large Representative Ezra Galperin ’27.
Everett answered: “I did not choose to do it purposely on a Jewish holiday.”
She also referenced her email correspondence with S.A. President Zora deRham ’27 from the previous week to show that the resolution had been in development for weeks. deRham confirmed the timing of their correspondence at the meeting.
In an interview with The Sun after the S.A. vote, Everett expressed disappointment over the S.A. “not addressing the issue at hand.”
“The question that I specifically stated that was on the table was if an academic institution should be investing in war weaponry. No specific state was mentioned and yet the conversation continued to single out one nation of many that was armed by these weapon manufacturers,” Everett said. “So for the Assembly to postpone it indefinitely on the contingency that did not exist is incredibly disappointing.”