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Students at Canadian universities say the strong-arm tactics meant to quash their protests have only strengthened their resolve.
Toronto, Canada – When University of Waterloo student Nicholas Sarweh received an email from the school informing him he was being sued for 1.5 million Canadian dollars ($1.09m), he was certain it was a mistake.
“I thought it said $1,500 and that they had made a typo. But after a while, I just absorbed that it was $1.5 million,” Sarweh, who is in his early 20s, told Al Jazeera.
Sarweh had been among the students on campus leading a months-long protest against Israel’s war on Gaza, erecting tents, fences and protest signs on a grassy part of campus called Grad House green.
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But by the end of June, much of the public attention surrounding the protest had died down. Many students had returned home for the summer.
That’s when the email arrived, Sarweh said, accusing him and six other students of property damage, trespass and intimidation. He considers it an act of bullying and intimidation on the part of university administrators.
“I thought to myself, ‘What a disgusting abuse of power.’ We’re not here partying. We’re not here for some abstract reason. We’re here because there’s the most documented genocide in history happening right before our very eyes.”
As the war nears the end of its 10th month, student activists like Sarweh say their experiences at the university encampments have left them feeling alienated from the institutions they turned to for an education.
But some experts believe the protests — and the international movement they inspired — will endure as testaments to the power of student activism, both on and off campus.
“I would imagine that, given the numbers of encampments that we’ve seen all over the world, at least a good number of students are going to look at that to see the kind of collective power that they do have,” said Anna Drake, a political science professor at the University of Waterloo who observed the protests firsthand.