Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine has imposed light disciplinary sanctions on eight students it identified as ringleaders of an unauthorized protest in which the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) took over and occupied an administrative building earlier this month.

On Friday, The Bowdoin Orient reported that the college settled on sentencing the students — who were given the sobriquet “Bowdoin Eight” by their collaborators after the incident — to probation. It also restored their permission to attend class and reside on campus, which they were barred from doing during the processing of their cases while serving interim suspensions

As previously reported, the students, members of the school’s SJP chapter, stormed Smith Union and installed an encampment there in response to US President Donald Trump’s proposing that the US “take over” the Gaza Strip and transform it into a hub for tourism and economic dynamism. The roughly 50 students residing inside the building had vowed not to leave until Bowdoin agreed to adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

Following the action, Bowdoin officials promptly moved to deescalate the situation by counseling the students to mind the “gravity of situation” in which they placed themselves, with senior associate dean Katie Toro-Ferrari warning that their behavior “could put them on the path where they are jeopardizing their ability to remain as Bowdoin students.” However, the Orient said the students continued to flood Smith Union anyway. One student, Olivia Kenney, proclaimed that “Bowdoin does not know how to handle us right now.”

School officials ultimately negotiated an end to the occupation of Smith Union without acceding to any of SJP’s demands for a boycott of Israel, and according to the Orient’s report, remained barred from operating on campus pending the completion of the disciplinary proceedings.

“[A] main goal for our office is to respect students as they navigate the student disciplinary process, while also upholding and respecting the Code of Community Standards, and the Bowdoin community as well,” Bowdoin College associate dean for community standards Jimmy Riley told the campus paper, declining to comment on the specifics of the punishments due to federal privacy laws.

Bowdoin College is one of several institutions to fend off an attempt to mount a prolonged occupation of school property.

In New York City, the anti-Zionist group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) on Wednesday occupied the Milbank Hall administrative building at Barnard College to protest recent disciplinary sanctions imposed on student activists who raided a classroom to spew pro-Hamas propaganda. Posting on Instagram, the group proclaimed that its members were “flooding the building despite Barnard shutting down campus.” Later, they reportedly assaulted a staff member, who, according to a source familiar with the situation, required medical attention in the hospital.

It has since been reported that the architects of that demonstration have also evaded accountability, as the college opted not to discipline them in exchange for their obeying an ultimatum to vacate Milbank the same evening in which they commandeered it.

“Columbia University has become the epicenter of antisemitic hatred in the United States,” StopAntisemitism executive director Liora Rez wrote to the US Department of Justice on Thursday, calling for action by the federal government. “The school, along with New York’s elected officials, should be ashamed for allowing the cesspool of antisemitism to fester in a city where Jewish people are such an integral part of the community.”

Earlier this month, SJP at Swarthmore College invaded the school’s Parrish Hall dressed like Hamas fighters, their faces wrapped with and concealed by keffiyehs. The move came as a surprise. While the group had announced an “emergency rally” scheduled for noon that day, there was little indication that it planned on commandeering the building and remaining inside of it indefinitely.

By the time the college formally warned the students that their behavior would trigger disciplinary measures, they had shouted slogans through bullhorns, attempted to break into offices that had been locked to keep them out, and pounded the doors of others that refused to admit them access.

Meanwhile, SJP collaborators reportedly circumvented security’s lockdown of the building to smuggle food inside. Several students then grew impatient and attempted to end the lockdown themselves by storming the building, and in doing so caused a physical altercation with security, whom they proceeded to pelt with expletives and other imprecations.

Swarthmore has temporarily suspended the group’s permission to operate on the campus while school officials complete an investigation of the incident.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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