在抗议的校园里，毕业典礼的光芒黯淡

【中美创新时报2024 年 5 月 2 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）玛丽莲·迈耶斯 (Marilyn Meyers) 邀请家人和朋友来到剑桥庆祝一个重要的里程碑：5 月 31 日从麻省理工学院毕业。现在，学生抗议者在大学克雷斯吉草坪搭建帐篷营地一周多后，迈耶斯已确保她的家人预订了可退款的酒店房间。随着麻省理工学院和其他新英格兰大学的紧张局势加剧，身为犹太人并支持以色列的迈耶斯表示，她担心自己的毕业典礼可能会被取消，或者至少会因校园内的敌对行动而受到损害。《波士顿环球报》记者Daniel Kool 和 Maliya Ellis对此作了下述详细报道。

迈耶斯说，这将是一个重大损失，特别是对于她班上的学生来说，他们中的许多人四年前的高中毕业典礼因 COVID-19 大流行而被取消或修改，而他们的大学早期也因社交距离规则而被打乱。

“我们在 Zoom 上加入，我们失去了大一，感觉就像我们也失去了大四，”迈耶斯说。“每个人都将大学视为美好时光，并且…… 。我可能还有一年没有受到污染。”

每年春天，开学季通常是大波士顿地区大学校园欢腾和庆祝的时刻。然而今年，人们的情绪充满了焦虑和不确定性。围绕以色列-哈马斯战争的紧张局势、学生支持巴勒斯坦人的抗议活动以及警方对示威者的镇压占据了话题的主导地位，并使期末例行公事陷入混乱。

尽管没有当地校园像南加州大学那样取消毕业典礼，但一些参加帐篷露营的学生不确定他们是否能毕业，或者是否会面临刑事或纪律指控。与此同时，反抗议者和支持以色列的人担心今年最大的活动受到干扰。东北大学将于周日在芬威公园举行毕业典礼，八天前，警方周六清理了一个营地，导致 100 多名抗议者被捕或拘留。

迈耶斯说，作为一名犹太学生，她在校园里感到越来越不舒服，她希望抗议的学生在毕业典礼上采取一些行动。

“我也警告过我的家人，可能会发生一些事情，要小心，”她说。“每天我去上课，我总是回头看。”

周日下午，在剑桥的另一边，23 岁的布里特·施拉德 (Brit Shrader) 头戴阿拉伯头巾，站在哈佛庭院 (Harvard Yard) 的 40 多个帐篷营地旁，哈佛庭院已对公众关闭一个多星期了。示威者希望哈佛披露并切断其与以色列的机构和金融联系，以及其他要求。

使用“他们/他”代词的施拉德将结束哈佛本科生的职业生涯，参加大学中央草坪上的亲巴勒斯坦营地，哈佛政府警告这一决定可能会导致纪律处分，因此可能会危及施拉德的参加 5 月 23 日的毕业典礼或获得学位的职业生涯。

然而，施雷德仍然致力于抗议活动，因为他们坚信，抗议以色列在加沙的战争在道义上优先于任何仪式。

“面对种族灭绝，面对 34,000 人被谋杀，这次毕业意味着什么？” 他们提到了加沙的死亡人数，在哈马斯领导的 10 月 7 日袭击之后，以色列的报复性轰炸和地面进攻造成数千人死亡。“相比之下，它感觉太渺小了。”

施拉德的家人仍计划参加仪式，施拉德表示，如果允许，他们可能会参加。不过，他们对哈佛并没有太多的喜爱。

“哈佛是野兽的肚子，”他们说，并引用了抗议者对哈佛的一些批评，包括哈佛与以色列的关系。

尽管校园内一片哗然，波士顿地区的几所学校告诉《波士顿环球报》，他们预计不会因学生抗议而对毕业典礼做出任何改变。营地往往位于校园的显眼位置，在某些情况下，毕业典礼将在校园或附近举行，尽管有些大学在远离校园中心的地点举行毕业典礼。

在塔夫茨大学，学生抗议者在校园绿地上搭建了至少十几个帐篷，大学毕业典礼的第一部分定于 5 月 19 日举行。发言人帕特里克·柯林斯 (Patrick Collins) 表示，学校的期末考试和毕业典礼时间表没有改变 ，学校将“管理局势，确保开学准备工作顺利进行。”

周日，在塔夫茨大学官员敦促他们“和平、自愿”解散后，塔夫茨学生组织者在 Instagram 上发表了自己的声明，呼吁更多学生站出来“保卫”营地。

组织者在帖子中写道：“做好长时间停留的准备，人多才安全。”

周二，塔夫茨大学管理人员向校园社区发出了另一封信，表达了对抗议者日益增加的不满，并警告说，如果他们不遵守禁止侵入令，他们可能会面临纪律处分。

他们写道：“我们将继续在合理范围内采取一切措施，以避免其他大学出现的对抗。” “但是营地需要结束，毕业典礼的准备工作需要开始。”

麻省理工学院校长萨莉·科恩布鲁斯在周六发布的视频信息中呼吁校园内的露营活动也逐渐结束。一位发言人表示，学校不会在活动前披露内部安全计划，但官员们正像每年一样为活动中断做好准备。

麻省理工学院露营活动的组织者、二年级本科生奎因·佩里安 (Quinn Perian) 表示，他无法透露露营活动会持续多久，但抗议者似乎不太可能有一天就简单地收拾行李离开。

“现在一切都变化得如此之快，”佩里安说。 “我只能说，我们知道我们的计划是一直待在这里，直到需求得到满足。”

可以肯定的是，一些学生并不认为营地和反抗议是主要因素，并表示它们对学生生活的影响微乎其微。

麻省理工学院计算机科学专业的大四学生约书亚·姆博戈 (Joshua Mbogo) 表示，他并没有感受到太大的选边站队的社会压力，抗议活动也几乎没有对他产生影响。

“有一小群人对此非常非常热衷，而且他们周围有一个圈子，”姆博戈说。 “更大的社区更多地只是观看。”

在艾默生，一些参加过校园附近公共小巷露营的学生表示，警方连夜的突袭导致 118 人被捕，这让他们很难为自己的学校感到自豪。

参加抗议活动但没有被捕的大四学生露西·雷克 (Lucy Raeke) 表示，她很欣赏艾默生营地形成的社区，并指出抗议者主持了讨论会。

“看着你的朋友因为做了一些让你在学校体验更好的事情而被拖出去，真是令人心碎，”雷克说。“这让我对在艾默生工作感到不兴奋或自豪，我认为这就是毕业的全部意义。”

艾默生发言人米歇尔·加索 (Michelle Gaseau) 在周一下午的一封电子邮件中表示，现在谈论对开工可能产生的影响还为时过早。艾默生学院的毕业典礼定于 5 月 12 日在波士顿大学校园举行，学生们也进行了抗议，但没有露营。

东北大学负责对外事务的高级副总裁迈克尔·阿米尼(Michael Armini)表示，他并不担心抗议者会影响毕业典礼，毕业典礼定于周日在芬威公园举行。上周五早上，他表示毕业典礼仍然“充满热情”。自逮捕以来，官员们尚未回复要求提供有关启动的更多信息的电子邮件。

周五，阿米尼表示，“甚至没有讨论”取消该活动。第二天，警方在校园的 Centennial Common 逮捕了 100 多名抗议者，他们将帐篷和个人物品装进一辆黑色移动卡车，并将绿地空置并设置了路障。

“就芬威球场而言，这是一个高度安全的设施，”阿米尼说。“每个人都必须拿到票，所以我们不担心芬威。”

奥古斯特·埃斯坎登 (August Escandon) 是东北大学一名即将毕业的高年级学生，他在警察清理学校营地时被捕，他准备接受纪律处分，但他试图把注意力集中在加沙的那些人身上，而不是他自己的困境上。

埃斯坎登的家人从全国各地来到波士顿庆祝这个周末，虽然他说他们对潜在的影响有些紧张，但“我想说他们支持我表明立场。”

“他们说毕业是你余生的开始，”他说。“重要的是要考虑一下我们的余生会是什么样子。”

《波士顿环球报》记者 Alexa Coultoff 和 Maddie Khaw 对本报告做出了贡献。

题图：今年春天即将毕业的麻省理工学院大四学生玛丽莲·迈耶斯 (Marilyn Meyers) 在校园里摆好姿势拍了一张肖像照。JESSICA RINALDI/GLOBE STAFF

附原英文报道：

On protesting campuses, the shine of commencement dulls

By Daniel Kool and Maliya Ellis Globe Correspondent,Updated May 1, 2024 

Marilyn Meyers invited family and friends to come to Cambridge to celebrate a major milestone: graduating from MIT on May 31.

Now, more than a week after student protesters set up a tent encampment on the university’s Kresge Lawn, Meyers has made sure her folks booked refundable hotel rooms. With tensions rising at MIT and other New England colleges, Meyers, who is Jewish and supports Israel, said she worries her graduation may be canceled or, at the very least, marred by hostilities on campus.

That would be a major loss, Meyers said, especially for students in her class, many of whose high school graduations four years ago were canceled or modified due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and whose early college years were disrupted by social distancing rules.

”We came in on Zoom, we lost freshman year, and it kind of feels like we’re losing senior year also,” Meyers said. “Everyone talks about college as like the good years, and . . . I maybe got one year of that untainted.”

Commencement season is normally a time of elation and celebration on college campuses across Greater Boston each spring. This year, though, the mood is heavy with anxiety and uncertainty. Tensions around the Israel-Hamas war, student protests in support of Palestinians, and police crackdowns on demonstrators are dominating the conversation and throwing end-of-semester routines into disarray.

Although no local campuses have canceled their commencements, as the University of Southern California has, some students who participated in tent encampments are unsure if they’ll be allowed to graduate at all, or whether they’ll be facing criminal or disciplinary charges. Meanwhile, counterprotesters and those who support Israel fear disruptions at the year’s biggest event. Northeastern University will hold commencement Sunday at Fenway Park — eight days after more than 100 protesters were arrested or detained when police cleared an encampment on Saturday.

Meyers said she has felt less and less comfortable as a Jewish student on her campus, and she expects the protesting students to take some action at commencement.

“I’ve warned my family, also, probably that something will happen, and to just be careful,” she said. “Every day I go to class, I’m always looking over my shoulder.”

On the other side of Cambridge Sunday afternoon, Brit Shrader, 23, wore a keffiyeh as they stood beside the 40-plus-tent encampment on Harvard Yard, which has been closed to the public for over a week. The demonstrators want Harvard to disclose and cut its institutional and financial ties to Israel, among other demands.

Shrader, who uses they/he pronouns, is ending their career as a Harvard undergraduate by participating in the pro-Palestinian encampment on the university’s central lawn, a decision that the Harvard administration has warned could result in disciplinary action — and therefore may jeopardize Shrader’s ability to take part in commencement on May 23 or receive their degree.

Shrader, however, remains committed to the protest, guided by their conviction that protesting Israel’s war in Gaza takes moral precedence over any ceremony.

“What does this graduation mean in the face of a genocide, in the face of 34,000 people murdered?” they said, referencing the death toll in Gaza, where thousands have been killed during Israel’s retaliatory bombardment and ground offensive, following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack. “It just feels so small in comparison.”

Shrader’s family is still planning to attend the ceremony, and Shrader said they’ll likely participate if permitted. They don’t feel much love for Harvard, though.

“Harvard is the belly of the beast,” they said, citing several of the protesters’ criticisms of Harvard, including its ties to Israel.

Despite the uproar on campus, several Boston-area schools told the Globe they were not anticipating any changes to commencement in response to student protests. The encampments tend to be located in prominent places on campuses, in some cases where graduations are scheduled to take place or close by, though some colleges hold their graduations at sites that are away from campus centers.

At Tufts, student protesters have set up at least a dozen tents on the campus green, where the first part of the university’s commencement ceremony is slated to take place May 19. Spokesperson Patrick Collins said the school’s final exam and commencement schedules have not been changed, and the school will “manage the situation to ensure set-up for commencement goes smoothly.”

On Sunday, after university officials urged them to disperse “peacefully and voluntarily,” Tufts student organizers put out their own statement on Instagram calling for more students to come out to “defend” the encampment.

“Come prepared to stay for long periods of time, there is safety in numbers,” the organizers wrote in the post.

On Tuesday, Tufts administrators sent another letter to the campus community expressing increasing frustration with the protesters and warning they may face disciplinary action if they do not heed a no-trespass order.

“We continue to do everything within reason to avoid the confrontations seen at other universities,” they wrote. “But the encampment needs to end, and Commencement setup needs to begin.”

MIT president Sally Kornbluth, in a video message released Saturday, called for her campus’s encampment to wind down as well. A spokesperson said the school does not disclose internal safety plans ahead of an event, but officials are preparing for disruptions as they do every year.

Quinn Perian, an organizer of MIT’s encampment and a second-year undergraduate, said he could not say how long the encampment would last, but it seemed unlikely that the protesters would simply pack up one day and go.

“Everything is changing so rapidly right now,” Perian said. “All I can say is we know that our plan is to be out here until the demands are met.”

To be sure, some students don’t see the encampments and counterprotests as major factors, and said their impact on student life have been minimal.

Joshua Mbogo, a senior studying computer science at MIT, said he has not felt much social pressure to pick a side, and the protests have hardly affected him.

“There’s a smaller group of people that are really, really intensely passionate about it, and they have kind of a circle around them,” Mbogo said. “The larger community more just watches.”

At Emerson, some students who participated in an encampment in a public alley near campus said an overnight police raid, which resulted in 118 arrests, makes it difficult to feel proud of their school.

Lucy Raeke, a senior who participated in the protest but was not arrested, said she appreciated the community that formed at Emerson’s encampment, noting that the protesters led discussion sessions.

“Watching your friends get dragged out for doing something that made your school experience better is heartbreaking,” Raeke said. “It’s making me not excited or proud to be at Emerson, which I think is the whole idea of graduation.”

Michelle Gaseau, an Emerson spokesperson, said in an email Monday afternoon that it was too soon to talk about possible impacts to commencement. Emerson’s commencement ceremony is scheduled to take place May 12 on Boston University’s campus, where students have also protested but have not camped out.

Michael Armini, Northeastern’s senior vice president of external affairs, said he had no concerns about protesters impacting commencement, which is scheduled to take place Sunday at Fenway Park. Last Friday morning he said there was still “a lot of enthusiasm” around commencement. Officials have not replied to emails requesting additional information about commencement since the arrests.

On Friday, Armini said there was “not even a discussion” about canceling the event. The next day, police arrested more than 100 protesters on the campus’s Centennial Common, loading tents and personal belongings into a black moving truck and leaving the green space empty and barricaded.

“As far as Fenway goes, it’s a highly secure facility,” Armani said. “Everyone has to be ticketed, so we’re not worried about Fenway.”

August Escandon, a graduating Northeastern senior who was arrested when police cleared the school’s encampment, is prepared to be disciplined, but is trying to focus on those in Gaza rather than his own predicament.

Escandon has family coming to Boston from across the country to celebrate this weekend and, while he said they are somewhat nervous about potential repercussions, “I would say they’re supportive of me taking a stand.”

“They say that graduation is the start of the rest of your life,” he said. “It’s important to think about what the rest of our lives will be like.”

Globe correspondents Alexa Coultoff and Maddie Khaw contributed to this report.