Jewish Ally Censored at State University Meeting
Despite following listed agenda procedures, the student was stopped from speaking about antisemitism on campus.
At a public meeting attended by the State of Florida’s top education officials on June 28th, an ally of the Jewish community at UCF was stopped from speaking once it became clear she would discuss antisemitism at Florida’s largest university - and that university’s complicity in encouraging it.
The student, who registered to speak during discussions of “Student Affairs,” managed to provide background information regarding the situation but was prevented from completing her statement by an unnamed official.
She managed to make the following statement:
Good morning everybody.
On January 23rd, UCF student Seif Asi came up to a memorial for October 7th victims, proceeding to threaten to shoot it up.
Today, he walks a free man because the State of Florida decided to drop the charges, and the University of Central Florida decided to allow him to graduate despite his terroristic threat.
The students attending this memorial are Israeli. Many of them have family members who have lost their lives on that tragic day, and this man is now terrorizing them on a campus that should be providing them comfort. And yet, the school decides that they are going to give him a slap on the wrist; they’re going to sweep it under the rug; nothing’s going to change.
This type of threat might have been a surprise to everybody else, but it was not a surprise to the students who have been engaging in pro-Israel activism work on this campus. We have been going to Student Conduct telling them the escalation of violence against us: how we have been spit at; how we have fellow students coming up to us on video telling us they support Hitler; telling us that they love dead Israelis. We’ve been telling the school and we’ve been ignored.
Even the staff at UCF — [unintelligible due to interruption]
The ally was interrupted by an official who stated “thank you ma’am, but that is not an item on our agenda, and your time is up.” According to that student, not only was she not out of time, but her speech was well within the topic of “Student Affairs.” It is currently unclear to us if this act was a violation of our ally’s First Amendment rights.
It’s clear why the official shut down the discussion before it could really begin. The sheer embarrassment that UCF would endure by being exposed for its mistreatment of the Jewish community right in front of state representatives was too much to bear. Unfortunately for the Jewish community, that official had nothing to fear. The Board of Governors was already notified of these concerns — and did nothing.
We will keep you posted on our allies’ efforts to humiliate UCF’s administration.
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Update: Added the date of the meeting.