Shortly after 6 a.m. on the morning of Tuesday, Oct 22, Swarthmore College Public Safety disassembled a “Solidarity Sukkah” on Parrish Beach. The removal came at the direction of the administration, which cited a lack of approval for the structure from the Office of Student Engagement (OSE) as a violation of the Student Code of Conduct. The sukkah, traditionally a temporary hut or shelter for Jews to use in observance of the week-long yearly holiday of Sukkot, was constructed by Swarthmore’s chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an international Jewish anti-Zionist organization.
Swarthmore JVP originally constructed the sukkah on Monday morning around 11 a.m. The group posted a statement on social media, which read, “Our Sukkah is part of a national movement of anti-Zionist Jewish students standing in solidarity with the struggle for Palestinian liberation and reclaiming Judaism apart from Zionism.” Following the sukkah’s removal, a representative from JVP spoke with The Phoenix anonymously for fear of being doxxed by outside groups. “Jews go to sukkahs every year to observe the holiday of Sukkot. And this year, with the ongoing genocide in Palestine, we felt that it would be right to not just have an apolitical sukkah, but one that is actively calling for divestment, an arms embargo, and for the Liberation of Palestine,” they said. The JVP representative also referenced similar solidarity sukkahs that had been constructed at Brown University, UCLA, Columbia University, and other institutions.
On Monday afternoon, OSE reached out via email to JVP leaders to inform the group of the required removal. In a copy of the correspondence obtained by The Phoenix, the email reads, “I wanted to reach out as it was brought to our attention that JVP has built a sukkah on Parrish lawn. We do not have record of a request for reserving Parrish lawn or an installation. To clarify, the sukkah on Parrish lawn has not received approval from OSE. As this structure has not received proper approval, it needs to come down immediately as it is in Violation of College policy. (Under Other Public Displays). If you have any questions, please let us know and we’d be happy to talk more.” The OSE email linked to the Student Code of Conduct, specifically the section on public displays that requires structures on College property to receive approval from an “appropriate College official.”
When asked, the JVP representative did not answer whether or not JVP agreed with OSE’s assertion that the organization had not received approval for the structure, or indicate if the group had attempted to receive approval before assembling. “It is our view that our right to have political expression on the [structural] sides of our sukkah, as well as our religious right to have a sukkah in the first place supersedes the limited and draconian rules of the code of conduct. So, if you have rules that don’t even allow for conversation, as in this case [OSE] claimed they would and then went back on that word [by] sending Pub Safe in, if you have rules that don’t allow for conversation, you can’t call this school a free school or a school that upholds students’ free expression in any way.”
In response to questions from The Phoenix, Swarthmore Media Relations Specialist Cara Anderson explained, “The decision to remove the sukkah erected by JVP was based solely on the fact that the group failed to follow the Student Code of Conduct’s Banners, Chalkings, Postings, and Other Public Displays policy. The policy is clear and straightforward, stating that structures ‘… on any College property must receive prior authorization.’ Had the group followed the policy, the outcome may have been different.”
The Swarthmore Student Code of Conduct has been the subject of recent controversy on campus following the Division of Student Affairs’ decision over the summer to change several policies governing protests on campus. The decision incited pushback from students, faculty, and others arguing that the college was attempting to stifle campus activism, and that they had not consulted with faculty before pushing these changes through. And, the policies that the college based its decision to remove the sukkah on are in a section on “Other Public Displays” which was specified to apply to structures, not just grounds, as part of the changes this summer.
When asked about the email from OSE, the JVP representative highlighted OSE’s willingness to discuss the matter more (as per the last line of the email) and the college’s openness to sukkahs on campus shown by the college’s approval of a different sukkah constructed by Interfaith Director and Jewish Student Advisor Michael Ramberg near the Dining and Community Commons.
“The college actively knew the significance of the sukkah [and] that as Jews, it would be a desecration for us to remove it,” they said. “It’s a desecration for it to be removed at all for that matter.”
A couple hours after OSE’s email, just before 5 p.m. on Monday, JVP reinforced this idea in their response to OSE. In a copy of the correspondence obtained by The Phoenix, the email reads, “Thank you for your email. We put up this Sukkah in observance of Sukkot, the Jewish holiday that ends this Wednesday evening. In the construction and blessing of this sukkah, we have established a sacred site for Jewish practice. One of our most authoritative rabbinic texts, the Shulchan Aruzh, states that taking down a sukkah is considered Bizui Mitzvah, it is ‘belittling of the mitzvah.’ A mitzvah is a sacred action that upholds the divine commitment made between G-d and hundreds of generations of Jews — upholding these mitzvot is the essence of our entire religion. We plan to take down the sukkah on Wednesday evening once the holiday is over.” This email only received the automatic response from OSE that any email to the office initially receives.
Before sunrise Tuesday morning, occupants of the sukkah awoke to Public Safety disassembling the structure as they slept. A member of JVP recorded the event, and a screenshot from the video can be seen below.
“Rather than continue to have a discourse that [OSE] said they would be welcome to having, they sent in Public Safety and Grounds crew early in the hours of the next morning, not even [thirteen hours after] their first initial email,” the JVP spokesperson said.
Anderson told The Phoenix that it was staff in the Swarthmore President’s Office that had made the final decision to remove the sukkah Tuesday morning. “We contemplated removing the sukkah on Monday afternoon, but we also wanted to give JVP an opportunity to remove it themselves, as they were asked to do.”
Still, JVP’s representative described the disassembly of the sukkah as “shocking,” given OSE’s willingness to talk and JVP’s description of the structure as temporary. The representative continued describing the removal, saying, “Students were inside of the sukkah sleeping. It was under the cover of night and it was still dark. So yeah, the college was well prepared for this sweep, and they wanted it to be in the dark so that they could not have this become some kind of scandal when lots of people were around. It’s very clear to us that this was a targeted operation, that the college used the cover of darkness to their tactical advantage.”
JVP’s representative alleged that the early morning and dark environment for the disassembly put students in danger of falling pieces, and called the event an “antisemitic hate crime” for its desecration of a Jewish symbol. Their statement released on Instagram Wednesday afternoon argued, “We were surrounded, awoken from our night of sleeping in the sukkah, as we are commanded to do by Jewish law, by Swarthmore Public Safety and grounds crew, who proceeded to desecrate our religious observance. Shining blinding lights into the eyes of the students, they ripped off the banners calling for divestment and an arms embargo against genocidal Israel and tore our sukkah down.”
The college contests this depiction of the nature of the removal. “There seems to be some misinformation about the actual process of removing the sukkah. The removal was not confrontational as some have suggested. The sukkah was disassembled, students’ belongings were not damaged, and the students left without incident,” Anderson said. She also added that the decision to remove the sukkah so early in the morning was a function of “primarily a factor of staff availability and scheduling.”
“Given the shift schedule of the staff members involved and their workload during the day, we decided it would be best to remove the sukkah before the start of the morning shift,” Anderson said.
Later in the day on Tuesday, Vice President for Student Affairs Stephanie Ives wrote an email to the Swarthmore community addressing the sukkah’s removal. After describing the college’s approach and reasoning, she wrote, “We regret that some of you are upset or offended by the removal of this sukkah and feel the College’s actions targeted members of our Jewish community. The removal of the sukkah was not intended to undermine the free expression of JVP or other members of our community. Rather, it was a response to the group’s failure to follow the stated policy in the Student Handbook.”
Associate Professor of History Megan Brown was troubled by the college’s decision to remove the sukkah, and also told The Phoenix that she did not know of any faculty members who were consulted about the decision.
Professor Brown, who is Jewish, wrote, “The destruction of the sukkah is chilling to me. I am deeply concerned by the College’s decision to tear down a religious shelter, particularly as students slept in it and before the sun had risen. Faculty, staff, and administration have a duty to protect our students, even if there are disputes or disagreements.”
Swarthmore JVP, in a second statement released on Wednesday afternoon, wrote “Swarthmore College is actively denying its anti-Zionist Jewish students a space to observe sacred Jewish ritual. The difference between our Sukkah and those of other Jewish campus groups is that ours stood in complete solidarity with the people of Palestine. Although Swarthmore College weaponizes antisemitism as an excuse to repress pro-Palestine student voices and target students of color, their dismantling of our Sukkah proves that they do not care about Jewish students. By doing so, they actively propagate the antisemitic message that Judaism is only acceptable when it supports Western imperialism through Zionism and genocide.” The college has maintained that the only relevant difference between the two sukkahs is the prior authorization that the Interfaith Center’s sukkah received but JVP’s did not.
The statement also connected the removal of the sukkah to the 28 students who’ve had charges of code of conduct violations brought against them, including 25 for pro-Palestinian activism. When asked about whether the college would press additional charges related to the sukkah’s unauthorized construction, Anderson emphasized that the college doesn’t conflate different events on campus or connect this incident to other incidents that have resulted in allegations. “What I can say generally is that the office of Student Conduct looks at all allegations of Code violations and issues charges when appropriate based on the evidence and information available,” she said.
Another question that came up in the aftermath of the removal was the comparison of the sukkah’s removal to the removal of a structure from the encampments on Parrish Beach last semester. In response to The Phoenix’s questions on the matter, Anderson wrote, “You are correct that the College removed a structure from Parrish Beach last spring. Both then and this week, the College enforced the policy consistently, notifying the students involved with erecting the structure last spring and the sukkah that they were in violation of College policy and that they needed to be removed immediately. In both cases, students refused to do so. Had the policy been applied unevenly — removing the structure last year but ignoring the policy violations in this case — you would surely (and rightly) be asking about the selective enforcement of our policies.”
Still, in their statement, JVP argued that the removal of the sukkah was different from other structure removals given its religious significance. The statement rejected the equivalency of the situations, and the sukkah’s removal “was sacrilegious and antisemitic.” It continued, “Ives has set an incredibly dangerous precedent in empowering administration to authorize hate crimes in order to repress students.”
To Brown, the decision to remove the sukkah fits into broader changes about the protection of free expression and future protest on campus, for all student backgrounds.
“It is also attempting to homogenize Jewish religious practice and undercut the significance of pursuing social justice, which many Jewish people understand as an integral part of their faith and culture,” she said. “A Jewish ritual that includes support for Palestinian life is, it appears, not Jewish enough to warrant respect or protection from the College.
