(NewsNation) — Pro-Palestinian student protesters have struck a deal with Evergreen State College administrators in Olympia, Washington.
The school is the alma mater of activist Rachel Corrie, who died in 2003 when an Israeli bulldozer crushed her as she tried to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian family’s home.
Administrators vowed to publicly call for a cease-fire and explore divestment from companies that profit from “gross human rights violations” and the occupation of Palestinian territories. In exchange, protesters agreed to remove their encampment, student journalists reported in The Cooper Point Journal.
“I’m proud of the students at Evergreen (for) the action that they took and the way they managed to get those concerns across,” Corrie’s father, Craig Corrie, said. “I’m proud of the faculty that worked with them and the administration they negotiated with that those concerns could be acknowledged.”
Tuesday’s agreement was the result of five hours of negotiations. The public liberal arts college joins Brown University and Northwestern University as some of the first schools to strike a deal with student protesters.
In addition to divestment efforts, the administration agreed to reject study-abroad trips to Israel, Gaza and the West Bank while travel to those regions is considered high-risk. The signed memorandum also calls for the creation of several groups including “Grant Acceptance Policy” and “Civilian Oversight of the Police Department” task forces.
Elsewhere, protests at schools such as Columbia University and University of California, Los Angeles grew violent as police moved in on student encampments throughout the week.
The signed memorandum between administrators and protesters at The Evergreen State College is a reminder of Corrie’s legacy.
Following her death in 2003, her emails from Palestine received global attention. Many were used in a play directed by the late actor Alan Rickman and edited by journalist Katharine Viner titled “My Name is Rachel Corrie.” Her writings were also published in the book, “Let Me Stand Alone.”
“It is most difficult for me to think about what’s going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States,” Corrie wrote in a Feb. 7, 2003, email. “Something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don’t know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I’m not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere.”
The house she was guarding the day an Israeli soldier killed her would be demolished about a year later. The family, whom she knew personally, contacted Rachel Corrie’s parents about six weeks ago. They were frightened, Craig Corrie said, but managed to escape to Egypt.
The father of a human rights observer, Craig Corrie is no stranger to political protest and unrest. He remembers trying to wrap his head around World War II as a young boy and witnessing the 1968 protests that erupted as young men were drafted to fight in Vietnam.
“These students now, it’s not about self-preservation for them,” Craig Corrie said. “It’s about seeing the other and understanding that could be them and understanding the connection to the other so many thousands of miles away. That’s really inspiring to me. I’m incredibly sorry that it’s necessary, but I’m glad they’re there.”