Dozens of protesters affiliated with Boylston Students for Justice in Palestine, a group of students advocating for a free Palestine, demonstrated in front of Emerson College’s Ansin building Friday afternoon immediately after publishing a list of demands that renewed the group’s previous calls for the removal of the interim expression policies, financial transparency, and divestment from Israeli affiliates. 

Students marched in a circle, yelling chants for Palestinian liberation and calling out the actions of the administration and police on the sidewalk outside of Ansin. President Bernhardt’s office is located on the 14th floor of the building.

Boylston SJP, in an emailed statement to The Beacon immediately before the action, said they intended to “deliver a message to the administration”: “The college administration, under Jay Bernhardt’s leadership, continues to ignore the demands of their students,” they wrote.

“We take no pleasure in these actions, but in refusing to engage with us and ignoring our demands, [the] administration is forcing us to escalate,” the anonymous statement continued. “We will continue to escalate until they hear us.”

The college, in a statement made to The Beacon after the event, said that the protest was a violation of the college’s policies and said that the college “supports the right of free expression from community members” when they are consistent with their guidelines. The guidelines say that protests on campus must be conducted by student organizations that are affiliated with Emerson, which Boylston SJP is not.

“The college will not respond to or consider their demands,” Michelle Gaseau, a spokesperson for the college, wrote.

During the action, which lasted almost an hour, the protesters glued flyers with their demands and hand-drawn stickers on the side of the building. “These demands are wheat pasted because we couldn’t personally give them to you,” one flyer read. 

The protesters moved away from Ansin after a final chant—“There is always a solution. Intifada revolution.” 

Immediately following their departure, Emerson facilities workers scraped the stickers off and wiped away painted messages saying “Free Gaza” and “F— ADL [Anti-Defamation League].”

The protest is the first this semester and second under the current college’s interim protest policy, the first of which occurred in October. The demonstration mirrored a similar demonstration in the Spring 2024 semester on May Day, where sticky notes with messages from the students to the administration were pasted to the buildings’ windows. 

Twenty minutes before the action, Boylston SJP posted an illustrated “zine” titled “The Negotiations” on Instagram outlining an alleged “brief overview” timeline of the group’s meetings with Bernhardt and the Emerson administration. The demands consisted of a list of seven calls to action for the college which included fostering Palestinian art and culture on campus, adopting the definition of antisemitism recognizing Zionism as a political ideology rather than a political identity, publicly demanding a ceasefire and an end to the occupation in Gaza and the West Bank, and the creation of a student elected committee for Office of Equal Opportunity’s processes.

The list was built upon past demands made by Boylston SJP which sparked the “Popular University Encampment” in the 2 Boylston Place Alley last spring. The encampment lasted four days and ended in the arrest of 118 protesters.

The demands address the ongoing conflict in Gaza, which has resulted in the death of an estimated 46,000 Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli military, according to the Gaza Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory. An estimated 1,200 people were killed by Hamas militants in the Oct. 7 attack. Currently, there is a fragile ceasefire deal in Gaza as hostages are still being returned from Hamas.

The Instagram post also included numerous alleged communications between Bernhardt, other administrators, and the students, including an email allegedly sent from the president during the fall 2023 semester responding to some of SJP’s demands. The college was not able to immediately respond to The Beacon’s request for comment regarding any of the alleged communications but will “provide additional comment” at a later time.

According to SPJ, the president declined to retract a previous statement made by the college on Oct. 9, 2023, that used the word “terrorist” to describe the events of the Oct. 7 attack in Israel. In another response to the student’s inquiries about divestment, Bernhardt allegedly said the college’s investment committee “does not meet with members of the Emerson community to share their requests or demands.”

The post also alleges that it wasn’t until March 26 that students were able to get a meeting with the president, alleging that the first meeting took place April 16.

The post also shared an alleged communication sent from Emerson College to SJP and Boylston Street Student Union on April 24, 2024, one day before the encampment arrests, where the college allegedly wrote that its initial reviews of the video footage “have not uncovered any evidence of [police] misconduct.”

It wasn’t immediately clear if Friday’s demonstrators faced disciplinary action.

“We will not stop until they concede,” SJP wrote to The Beacon.