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The New Guard

VA Tech Student Government Creates Resolutions to ‘Defund’ Campus Police, Divest From ICE

By

Julia Johnson

July 19, 2023

The Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) at Virginia Tech University is set to hear resolutions on defunding the campus police, joining the anti-Semitic BDS movement, and divesting from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to a tip submitted through Young America’s Foundation’s Campus Bias Tipline.

The controversial new resolutions were introduced ahead of the September 23 senate meeting, where the resolutions will be heard, and determined whether they move on to a second hearing and subsequent vote.

“Virginia Tech administrators have acknowledged that police murders are ‘race-driven,’ have affirmed the Black Lives Matter movement, and called for action” reads GPSS Resolution 2021-22L.

“If the university and community affirms Black Lives Matter then it stands to reason they ought to support the single, solitary demand made by the movement.”

BLM is a radical far-left organization whose own leaders professed themselves to be “trained Marxists.” The organization has also come under fire for calling to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure” in a since-deleted section of the BLM website.

The concerns with a school endorsing such an organization are plentiful. The student senate’s contention that since the school supports BLM they must pass this resolution is flimsy at best.

Young Americans for Freedom activist Blake Barnhill told Young America’s Foundation he was “baffled that at an institution that remembers a terrible shooting that occurred in 2007, where 32 people were shot and killed, the GPSS would push so hard for our first line of defense to be removed from campus.”

“Our campus police force works diligently to protect all members of the campus community around the clock and this resolution slanders our police and makes light of all the hard work they do to keep us safe,” Barnhill said.

Another resolution, GPSS Resolution 2021-2022D2, seeks to require Virginia Tech faculty stop developing technology and educational programs that support ICE staffing, enable ICE detention centers, or develop technologies easily appropriated for border security.”

“The vast majority of immigrants in detention centers are forced to flee their home countries because of conditions created by US military intervention in Central America in support of anti-democratic, corrupt and authoritarian governments who have in many cases waged wars against their own populations…” the resolution reads.

It also requires that a task force be assembled to audit research and ensure compliance, however, the task force may not consist of those with “national security ties,” but instead—illegal immigrants.

A third resolution, GPSS Resolution 2021-22N3, calls for an immediate implementation of an “academic and cultural boycott of Israel.”

More specifically, the resolution seeks to require Virginia Tech to “begin divesting all institutional investments from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation and apartheid.”

According to the resolution, it is not tenable to “continue to ignore BDS or reject it in the name of a non-existent neutral and free academic exchange of ideas.”

“The political architecture of Israeli colonialism and apartheid has left Palestinians without any formal legal or political mechanisms through which they could secure protection from Israeli colonial violence,” the resolution states, while accusing the U.S. of providing “cover for Israeli colonialism.”

“The resolution on Boycott, Divest and Sanction flies in the face of the large Jewish community that we have at Virginia Tech and shows an all too present anti-Semitic embrace from the Left,” Barnhill said of the resolution.

These few resolutions are indicative of a deeply leftist organization with political motivations. While these resolutions are ridiculous, they aren’t surprising. Academia has become increasingly more radical in its left-wing tendencies through the years. If these resolutions pass, it will be a damning indictment of the leftist takeover of higher education.

To voice your concern, contact GPSS at [email protected].

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