Hunger strike by UR students ends

After a 12-day hunger strike, students at the University of Rochester say their calls for dialogue with administrators over Gaza and campus free speech were met with silence, even as university officials say the school took steps to address the students’ health and well-being.

A week ago, students, some of whom are affiliated with the Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Rochester, ended the strike that was announced via social media. The protest began with six people, but ended with four. One student had severe health concerns, while another had to focus on personal matters.

UR spokesperson Sara Miller stated that university officials were made aware of those on hunger strike and took steps to address their mental and physical well-being. Students on strike, who spoke to the Beacon, claim that these steps were taken without direct communication with administrators, the purpose behind the strike.

“We are not outsiders of the university, we are students,” says UR student and hunger striker Aleena Ressas. “We pay tuition here. The fact that we had to go hungry for almost two weeks just to be heard is absolutely shameful.”

The motivation behind the hunger strike, students say, came following an August confirmation by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Famine Review Committee of widespread famine throughout Gaza. The World Health Organization, UNICEF, and select United Nations agencies—including the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organization—have also echoed the IPC’s findings.

“We’ve seen renewed violence consistently (since the ceasefire),” says Ressas. “Our actions were meant to highlight that the ceasefire does not equal freedom, and that starvation and catastrophe in Gaza continue under such unbearable conditions with severely limited aid.”

Strikers sought a public statement of support and acknowledgement for suffering in Gaza, a student and faculty town hall over free speech, and adherence to a 2024 recommendation by the university’s Ethical Investment Advisory Committee that UR avoid direct investments in securities issued by companies selling goods or services that support military operations that violate U.S. or international law. (In 2023, UR said that 0.2 percent of its Long Term Investment Pool was in Israel-related companies, and none conducted business with the Israeli military or government. Miller says that percentage has since declined.)

“We’re only asking for the bare minimum from an institution that claims to uphold justice and compassion,” says Ressas, who is Palestinian. “What’s so unreasonable about acknowledging the suffering of your own students, (my) people, or protecting the fundamental right to free expression on campus?”

The first days of the hunger strike saw students picket just outside campus, near the Bausch & Lomb Riverside Park, before relocating near the university’s Wallis Hall. Students said they had lost an average of 13 pounds throughout the course of the hunger strike. Ressas was evaluated by a nurse concerning the long-term impact of her weight loss, she says.

“After the third day, I felt numb to it, so I didn’t really feel hunger,” says Ressas. “By day seven, I experienced chest pain, heart palpitations, ocular migraines, and imbalance while walking, especially from class to class. … (Students) even woke up with purple fingernails because it was so cold the previous night, and our body temperatures (dropped) that low.”

“Some people will say, ‘You only did it for 12 days,’” says UR student Laith Ali, who participated in the hunger strike. “You wake up in the morning (and) have the taste of metal in your mouth from the (ketosis) in your body literally eating the fat and muscle.”

When the strike was announced via an anonymous email affiliated with Students for Justice in Palestine, Miller said the university would not respond, stating that the group was not recognized on campus. Ali then sent an email to UR leadership Oct. 20 signed by the five students on strike.

“We are writing to you as five students who have now been on a hunger strike for five consecutive days in solidarity with the people and students of Gaza and in protest of the university’s continued silence, inaction and complicity in the face of a genocide and the persistent violence in violation of the recently declared ceasefire,” the email reads. “The express purpose of this email is to request a meeting with administrators about the acknowledgment of Palestinian suffering, free speech on campus, and ethical investment.”

Three students participating in the hunger strike confirmed they received referrals to the UR’s CARE network, offered by the university. UR says its CARE Network exists to identify and support students who may be struggling. Any person on campus, student or faculty, can file a CARE report.

“I thought that was just a way to save face by saying ‘we tried to help them’ when they know mentally I’m fine,” Ali says. “How much time does (UR president) Sarah Mangelsdorf have in a week? Does she really have not even an hour to spare in a full week to have a sit-down conversation?”

The students claim they have attempted to communicate with university administrators through faculty and student mediators, as well as UR’s Ombuds Office, which helps with conflict resolution. Other than the CARE referrals, students report receiving no communication from the university.

Faculty within UR’s School of Arts and Sciences spoke to the Beacon on condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation, regarding the concerns of those on strike.

“For years, this movement has been smeared with rhetoric that paints them as a threat to community safety. But hunger striking is one of the most time-honored pacifist tools in the global history of organizing—although of course one need not be a pacifist to use it,” says one faculty member. “As the students’ hunger strike reminded us of the forced starvation of Palestinians, the university’s practical absence during the 12 days echoes its larger silence on the genocide, regardless of whatever personal sympathies administrators may hold in the privacy of their own hearts.”

Another faculty member attempted to communicate with university leadership regarding the efforts of those on hunger strike.

“The response was that it would not be helpful to meet with the students as the administration could not meet their demands,” says the second faculty member. “Setting aside my doubts about the usefulness of a hunger strike, I admired the persistence and calm determination of these students, who continued to attend classes and complete their academic work while participating in this peaceful and entirely legitimate protest.”

The ninth day of the strike—Oct. 23—saw students and community members set up a table outside a UR-hosted optics career fair at the Rochester Riverside Convention Center, before being promptly removed by security after handing out flyers. The next day, students participating in the hunger strike joined other members of Students for Justice in Palestine in a rally calling on the administration to further communicate with their students.

“Nobody at this university could possibly understand the hunger, the fear, the devastation that is inflicted on the people of Gaza, least of all me,” says hunger striker Erin Hess, who spoke at the rally. “But I have not eaten for 10 days, and I’m starting to see spots when I stand up, and I have trouble sleeping for more than three hours. … It seems that my university community doesn’t care.”

Throughout the 12-day hunger strike, students noted that support and solidarity came from a variety of individuals, including other students at the university, nurses who monitored their vital signs, and community members who lent their support outside the university. Ali and others expected even more student support and solidarity. UR, like other institutions across the country, tightened its rules around protests, implementing its Demonstrations, Vigils, and Peaceful Protests policy in August 2024.

“The protest policy was created after big Palestinian protests,” explains Ali. “I feel like the school wants to shut down the voices that are trying to protest for pro-Palestinian safety and liberation.”

“We’re living through a dialectical moment, and a moment where the pressures and what makes it scary make possible and necessary collectivities of integrity and solidarity,” says Joshua Dubler, associate professor of religion at UR. “That’s what I have witnessed for the past two years, and that’s what I feel fortunate to be a part of over the past two years.”

Dubler, who stood alongside pro-Palestinian student protestors during the encampment of Spring 2024, states he has seen students act with integrity, courage, and discipline.

“I’m foremost a teacher, and so I get to work with students and I want students to feel like they have the rights that I had when I was a student to experiment with things, to make mistakes, to get things wrong,” says Dubler. “For the movement for Palestinian survival and liberation that is so systematically misrepresented and maligned and lied about, this movement doesn’t have the room to make mistakes. I’ve just been so impressed.”

As they return to academic studies full-time, the striking students are unclear about next steps—following protests, an encampment, and now a hunger strike. What is clear, however, is their stated commitment to pro-Palestinian advocacy.

“I recognize the privilege that I hold to be here and to have access to this education,” says Ressas. “I choose that with my privilege I am able to speak, to act, and to stand for those who can’t.”

Narm Nathan is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and a member of the Oasis Project’s inaugural cohort.

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