The University of Connecticut Undergraduate Student Government voted last Wednesday against a referendum calling for the university to disclose their investments and divest from financial partners a part of the military-industrial complex.
The referendum would have been put before the student body for individuals to vote on. The legislation to do so failed in a vote of eight for and 15 against, with four abstentions.
Opponents of having the referendum sent to the student body to be voted on cited biased language within the document. Many took aim at the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement, often called BDS.
One such opponent, Aviva Ross, said that language used in the referendum had no application to the topic at hand during public comment.
“The proposed referendum uses the words genocide, apartheid and war crimes. Heavy, emotionally charged and objectively negative terms that do not apply to the situation at hand,” Ross said.
Ross further said that use of such language was a specific tactic used by BDS movements to “weaponize student governments,”
“[It weaponizes student government] By inserting false, biased language into our processes in order to push misinformation and hate instead of fostering dialogue,” Ross said.
Andre Abarientos, a pathobiology and sociology double major and proponent of the referendum countered Ross’ statement, saying that multiple independent, international organizations had found Israel guilty of genocide.
“As has been stated repeatedly throughout this resolution for the referendum, what is happening in Palestine right now is a genocide,” Abarientos said. “Several human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Interational Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court have all individually substantiated this claim.”
A United Nations commission recently found that Israel has committed a genocide in the Gaza Strip.
In addition to humanitarian arguments, proponents argued that the referendum would bring accountability to UConn, forcing the administration to disclose where investments funded by student fees and tuition are being made.
Amelie Keast, a proponent of the referendum, said that the goal of the referendum was a UConn that is transparent with its students.
“We are stakeholders in the university and as stakeholders, transparency is the least we deserve,” Keast said.
Abarientos echoed Keast’s statements of transparency, saying that UConn as it stands is inherently undemocratic.
“If UConn truly wants to operate as committed to peace, justice and human rights as the Dodd Center should indicate, why are asking these questions so impossible?” Abarientos said. “The undemocratic nature of this university is rampantly obvious given that we don’t even know where the money we give is being invested.”
Luca Khanna, a political science and Spanish double major, referred to UConn’s 1986 decision to divest from businesses connected to South Africa under apartheid during the public comment section of the meeting.
“In 1986, UConn divested $217,000 from business in South Africa,” Khanna said. “UConn students realized their tuition was supporting a racist apartheid regime.”
Khanna continued, saying UConn was repeating the same mistakes, with dire consequences.
“Today, UConn is supporting another racist apartheid regime,” Khanna said. “Unfortunately, this racist apartheid regime is also committing genocide against the Palestinian people. At the very least, 100,000 civilians have been martyred since Oct. 7, 2023.”
As the senate concluded public comment and shifted to discussion, Tamara Segal, a senator for the College of Engineering countered claims that the referendum was antisemitic and advocated for violence against Jewish people.
“As a Jewish student I naturally care about the wellbeing of UConn’s Jewish community, and it pains me to know of the distress that some have felt and continue to feel,” Segal said. “But I cannot agree that this referendum is antisemitic. It does not target, implicate or even mention Jews but rather focuses on political actions and humanitarian crisis.”
Segal mentioned that she strongly supported divestment from the military industrial complex but was concerned about biased language in the referendum.
“As an engineer and a global citizen, I care about sustainable solutions. While not hateful, this referendum is biased,” Segal said. “It’s not because it used the word divestment or genocide or Palestinian, but because of the phrasing and the fact that the author cites her own view on the matter as context.”
Segal concluded her statements emphasizing her desire to continue to work on a referendum that would satisfy senate bylaws.
“I don’t want the dream of this referendum to die here on the senate floor tonight,” Segal said. “I want to push through to make it what it should be. Although the committee was unsuccessful, I want to continue the work personally and with the support and insight of others to refine the referendum, so it poses this question without persuasion but instead lets each voter’s natural morals and inclinations guide them.”
The committee Segal mentions is in reference to a committee which the senate formed on Feb. 5, 2025, tasked with addressing concerns regarding the language of referendum. The senate voted to dissolve the committee for systemic failures on Sept. 3, 2025.
This article was updated on Sept. 24 to correct the misspelling of Luca Khanna’s name from “Khana.”
The DC sat on this story for a week, hoping it would go away. The motion was soundly defeated and the DC has lost its campaign to sway the vote. But this “news” article quotes only one student who sided with the majority, and FIVE!!! from the losing side. The only majority speaker that Gottlieb quotes spoke at the very beginning of the meeting. Did your pro-boycott editors tell you to tune out the rest? What a joke of a “news”paper.
If you want better or speedier reporting on an issue you care about, you could have volunteered to write this article yourself. Unless, of course, if you’re not actually a student. In any case, the DC has a weekly writing schedule that does not always allow for reporting breaking news on short notice. The earliest this could have been published was Tuesday.
You sat on the story so that you could splash it and its dishonest report of the meeting on Wednesdays front page. The DC had no trouble publishing a news article on the board of trustees meeting the day after it happened, or the Mansfield town council meeting two days after it happened. So much for your silly “excuse.”
The icing on the cake? Yet another year of publishing sensationalist garbage on a Jewish sacred holy day. For shame.
Thank you “sore losers” for your spot-on comment! The DC has ALWAYS been a Jew hating, Israel hating rag and it’s complete hogwash ”You’re lazy” for you to expect anyone to believe that this wasn’t reported sooner because of the DC’s “weekly reporting schedule”. The DC and their ignorant Jew hating editorial team is just pissed because the USG vote didn’t go their way. If the vote had gone pro referendum you better believe that it would’ve been FRONT PAGE news the very next day. Thank you to the 15 USG senators who did the right thing in voting the discriminatory referendum down.
Israel deserves to be hated as a Jewish student. It’s a pathetic excuse for a country that commits the same atrocities that were committed against my ancestors. Every international, independent NGO or intergovernmental organization has recognized Israel to be a genocidal state.
The referendum: biased because all reputable sources point to the objective reality of genocide. What “neutral” information is there? ls the fact of forced starvation, mass slaughter of children and civilians, and mass rape of prisoners untrue because it’s “too biased”? Has land not been getting stolen and destroyed since 1948? Are we still under the illusion that “israel” tells the truth? Who cares about undeniable crimes against humanity when we can ignore it all on the basis of some technicality? The 15 ‘senator’ hacks that voted against are siding with a small group of racist genocide deniers and have seem to have forgotten an overwhelming majority of students had voted in favor of the referendum around the time of its introduction. USG is a joke.
One thing that makes this topic so difficult and charged is that the definition of “genocide” is inconsistent and has changed over the years. If USG wanted to divest from war, that would make more sense. “Apartheid” makes no sense at all. Israel is a diverse country with equal rights for all citizens- heck, look at how much Jewish Israeli blood has been shed trying to save their Arab Israeli countrymen who were kidnapped on Oct7. This referendum and the entire BDS campaign is a blood libel, rooted in the same antisemitism as the nazi blood libels in generations past. If the USG is going to even touch this topic, it should also call for release of the 50 remaining Israeli hostages and the disarmament of Hamas and similar groups- since these are the causes of the Gaza war in the first place!