Over the past two days, students at UBC Okanagan have begun a hunger strike, joining students at UBC Vancouver who are now over a week into theirs. They are demanding that UBC divest from weapons manufacturers and companies listed on the UN settlement list.
Below are two letters that were sent to Principal and Deputy Vice Chancellor Dr. Lesley Cormack. Neither received a response. In addition to the two letters from UBCO students, a third letter was sent to President and Vice-Chancellor Dr. Benoit-Antoine Bacon by students at UBC.
Letter 1
March 24, 2025
Subject: Request for Meeting: Day 1 of Hunger Strike at UBCO
Dear Dr. Cormack,
We are coming to you today with our frustration. With our exhaustion. Our desire for change. Since we first began conversing with you on UBC’s unethical investments, it has been close to a full calendar year of having no meaningful response from you or the administration about our divestment demands. Even 5 months of ongoing meetings with UBC senior staff members have not led to a single immediate and tangible action from the UBC administration. Every single one of our demands remains unmet to this very day. As our Principal and Deputy Vice Chancellor, we would have hoped that you would advocate for the needs of your students, particularly when this issue impacts so many of them on a personal level.
However, we have only been met with dismissal and inaction. That is why, in an effort to ensure our demands for divestment are taken seriously, we have been forced to escalate our measures. In solidarity with our fellow students at UBC Vancouver who are now on the eighth day of their hunger strike to demand divestment, we are following suit with our own hunger strike here at UBCO.
It shouldn’t have had to come to this, but we hope and expect that this escalation and the extreme nature of our protest will finally give rise to seeing real action from our administration. Given that 1700+ students have signed our petition for divestment, it’s clearly something that needs to be addressed. With that in mind, we would like to request a meeting with you to discuss how you intend to meaningfully work with students to address their concerns regarding divestment, as well as tangible next steps to move forward. If you truly care about the well-being of your students, show us through tangible actions. Listen to us, not just superficially, but genuinely.
We will not stop fighting and trying everything we can until the UBC administration makes the moral choice to divest from weapons manufacturers and companies on the UN settlement list.
We hope to hear a response from you soon.
Signed,
UBC DIVEST!
Letter 2
March 25, 2025
Subject: Request for Meeting: Day 2 of Hunger Strike at UBCO
March 25, 2025
Dear Dr. Cormack,
Today marks Day 2 of the hunger strike at UBC Okanagan, launched in solidarity with the UBC Vancouver hunger strike, now in its ninth consecutive day. It also marks Day 536 of Israel’s accelerated genocide in Palestine — a genocide that your administration remains actively silent about, even as students on both campuses put their bodies on the line.
In the last 24 hours alone:
Israel has killed 57 Palestinians and injured 134 more in Gaza.
Two Palestinian journalists, Mohammad Mansour and Hossam Shabat, were killed — bringing the total to 208 journalists murdered in Gaza since October 7.
The Israeli army fired explosives at the Red Cross building in Rafah, while six medics remain missing after yesterday’s siege of a rescue mission.
A 17-year-old Palestinian died in Israeli captivity — the first documented minor killed in occupation prisons.
Israeli airstrikes targeted homes, displacement tents, and schools, killing children and entire families in Khan Younis, Gaza City, Nuseirat, and Tuffah.
At least 23 Palestinians — including seven children — were killed in pre-dawn bombings this morning alone.
In the West Bank, settlers seized a Palestinian home in Hebron with Israeli army coordination.
With all of this context, the UBC student body continues to act where the administration will not. Hunger-striking students have already begun losing weight and exhibiting signs of fatigue. Many students on campus have also shown their support, as evidenced by the 1800+ signatures on our petition, as well as the significant student presence at our hunger strike zones. Meanwhile, you — and the wider UBC administration — have responded with cowardly, immoral silence. Not a single acknowledgment of the hunger strike. Not a single meeting with Palestinian students. Not even a public statement.
Let us be clear: the UBC administration can choose divestment at any time. The power to end this rests in your hands. How much longer will you remain silent?
Signed,
UBC DIVEST!
Letter 3
Subject: Urgent Request for Meeting with UBC Board of Governors
Dear President Bacon,
We, the students of the University of British Columbia, write to you at a moment of historic significance and profound moral urgency. In response to the university’s continued investment in weapons manufacturers and companies in violation of international law, UBC students have engaged in an unprecedented and sustained campaign of protest, including encampments on both campuses, five months of direct talks, a historic referendum, a two-day student strike that shut down the UBC bus loop and Koerner Library, and both campuses now on the 10th day of a hunger strike.
This action is not taken lightly. It comes in the context of a renewed and ongoing genocide, which demands that we, as members of an institution that claims to uphold justice and human dignity, refuse to remain complicit. Our demands for divestment are clear, necessary, and long overdue. UBC has the power to take a principled stand, as it has done in the past, and we call upon the Board of Governors to meet with us immediately to hear our case.
As we did upon delivery of our formal Responsible Investment Proposal on February 12th, we again formally demand a meeting with the Board of Governors at the earliest possible opportunity and expect a response to this request by 11:59PM on March 27th. A continued failure to engage with us would be an abdication of the university’s ethical responsibility, a direct dismissal of student voices and actions rooted in justice, and cause for damage to alumni and donor relations.
Our coalition of UBC students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members is expecting your prompt response.
Sincerely,
UBC DIVEST!
A Response From UBC
The following is the response we received on Day 11 of the Hunger Strike:
Good afternoon,
Thank you for your letter dated March 26, 2025, addressed to the President’s Office and the UBC Board of Governors. I am responding on behalf of the Board and Administration.
The university has formal governance processes in place to support student, faculty, and staff engagement on matters such as responsible investment.
As noted last year, the university will communicate updates on our work regarding responsible investment as updates become available. We expect to communicate our next update in early April. Should your group wish to provide further input following that update, you are welcome to submit a written letter to the Board for its consideration through the Board of Governors Secretariat. Correspondence addressed to the Board of Governors is provided to the Board for information at regularly scheduled Board meetings. To be included in an upcoming meeting, correspondence must be submitted at least three business days in advance. Letters received after that time will be shared at the following meeting.
In regards to your mention of the Hunger Strike, it is important to note that with the students’ permission, UBC nursing staff have been able to monitor and assess the participants’ conditions throughout the strike. We will continue to provide health support as requested by the students participating in the hunger strike and our VP Students is always open to engaging with students about their concerns on this matter.
Sincerely,
Melanie Stewart
This cowardly, dismissive, meaningless excuse of a response to the greater UBC community, when students are literally putting their lives on the line to show the administration their unwillingness to exist in a world where their scholarship money is funded by genocide, is disgusting. Also, a letter WAS submitted on Feb 12th, in plenty of time for our concerns to be included tomorrow’s Board of Governors meeting.
As the historic student strike earlier this week has shown, the UBC community will not sit idly by as we bear witness to the mass slaughter of Palestinians, slaughter on a scale we cannot bear. Zionism has been described by some as a collective psychosis. This is the only possible way to explain how one group of human beings can commit the atrocities that Israel commits every minute of every day against Palestinians.
By refusing to divest, to divest what amounts to 0.01% of the UBC endowment fund into ethical investments, by falling back on their “normal governance processes in place to support student, faculty, and staff engagement on matters such as responsible investment.”, the UBC administration helps arm and support this collective psychosis. How any “governance processes” can witness the genocide in Palestine and come to the conclusion that investing in a settler colonial project such as Israel is “responsible investment” is horrifying, and clearly rooted in base racism.
This disinterested and apathetic response , with the inclusion of the untruth about our previous letter not being received in time, and in light of 16 months of intense protest and attempts to engage in a meaningful manner with administration, only cements us in our determination to continue the fight for divestment. The UBC administration is clearly not going to do the right thing until pressured even further.
Our Response
This was our response to the administration’s letter, sent on Day 11 of the hunger strike:
Dear President Bacon,
Thank you for your response of March 27, 2025, to our letter dated March 26, 2025.
Over the past seventeen months, students, staff, faculty, and community have called upon you and the Board of Governors to address UBC’s investments and institutional ties linked to scholasticide, genocide, and unlawful siege in Gaza. On February 12, 2025 we submitted a 30-page proposal titled “Divestment from Violations of International Law: A Responsible Investment Proposal” (see attached). This letter requested a meeting with the Board of Governors over a month and a half before the Board of Governor’s meeting. You gave no response.
Students have protested peacefully through a 71-day encampment, written letters and signed petitions, met with administration officials across 5 months of campaigning, and held press conferences and rallies to insist that UBC divest from violations of international law. During the time that you have rebuffed our appeals, Apartheid Israel has killed more than 18,000 children and destroyed every university in Gaza. Appalled at your non-response, students at both Vancouver and Okanagan campuses have felt compelled to undertake a hunger strike as a last resort to appeal to your conscience and those of our Board of Governors. What more must we do to ask for you to take the ethical and commonsense path of enacting values and policies UBC claims to represent and opposing - as required under international law - livestreamed genocide?
You have had ample opportunity to respond to our appeals and to enable the 0.01 percent of the UBC endowment invested in death to be reallocated toward ethical investments. You have refused our many calls for meetings since December, and abrogated the decision-making procedure related to ethical investments you promised, which included regular (monthly) updates. You are also not following proper procedure around requests for meetings with the Board of Governors, showing a clear discriminatory approach towards our concerns.
The current hunger strike was undertaken with careful consultation with medical professionals and round-the-clock care arranged from students, staff, faculty, and community who are deeply concerned that UBC continues to contribute to war crimes through its unethical investments. Hunger strikers did not ask for but cooperated with the nurses you have occasionally sent as cover for the potential damage to UBC’s claims to care about student welfare. Their 2-minute interactions with the hunger strikers can hardly be compared with the on-call care of medical and counselling professionals the students have arranged for themselves, and they do not indemnify you from liability.
At the hunger strike site, members of the community have shown an outpouring of support for divestment, as have the 20% of the student body who voted by a 76% margin for a two day strike for divestment, as did the hundreds of staff, students, and faculty who marched for 6 hours on March 24th, picketing for divestment at the UBC bus loop. UBC has spoken. Shutting us out of meetings and reneging on your institutional obligations will not solve your fundamental problem, which is that you are in violation of your own policies and procedures.
Sincerely,
UBC DIVEST!