The University of Washington has suspended the 21 students arrested earlier this week for occupying an engineering building during a pro-Palestinian protest, the school announced Wednesday. The students who moved into the Interdisciplinary Engineering Building in Seattle on Monday evening demanding the school break ties with Boeing have also been banned from all UW campuses, according to a school statement. Thirteen people who were arrested but are not students have also been banned from the university’s Seattle campus, it added. The school said the occupation resulted in “significant damage” to the building and equipment housed in it. Multiple dumpsters were also set on fire outside the school. Boeing has donated over $100 million to UW since 1917, including $10 million for the engineering building, The Seattle Times reported. Boeing is a major supplier to the Israeli Defense Forces, and that country has received more military aid from the US than any other country since World War II. The students who occupied the building unofficially renamed it after Shaban al-Dalou, a teenage engineering student who was killed along with his mother after an Israeli airstrike triggered an inferno outside of a Gaza hospital. Because of Boeing’s donation, the aviation manufacturer was granted naming rights for the building’s second level. The US Department of Education announced an investigation Tuesday into the protest. “The University values its long-standing partnership with the federal government,” the school said. “We will cooperate with the Task Force’s review and are confident that an evaluation will find we are in compliance with federal civil rights laws.” The federal Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism responded to the protests with a statement saying the university needs to follow up “with enforcement actions and policy changes that are clearly necessary to prevent these uprisings moving forward.” School spokesperson Victor Balta said Thursday that the university initiated some changes in November that included tracking incidents of bias, antisemitism and Islamophobia, but recognized the need to continually improve. Some changes include adding a Title VI coordinator position, strengthening relationships with the Jewish community, improving bias incident reporting and response processes, and consolidating anti-discrimination compliance in a new Civil Rights Compliance Office. In March, the University’s Board of Regents overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to divest from companies with ties to Israel, the school’s statement said.
