RISD students continue occupation of campus building
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WLNE) — It was a two-pronged approach for demonstrators at the Rhode Island School of Design, as pro-Palestinian protests continued Tuesday outside of a campus building.
Inside the building at 20 Washington Place, 22 students and one community member remained barricaded in classrooms on the second floor of the administration building.
“It’s different and it is definitely extreme,” said Smithfield resident Ryan Foster. “But what else do you do?”
The protest began around 9 a.m. Monday, when 24 people sat in the 20 Washington Place building and refused to leave.
It then escalated to students barricading themselves in classrooms, where they have been since.
“We were out here early. We were here until 2 a.m. and arrived at 8 a.m. today,” explained RISD senior Luca Antonio Colannino. “We are here to support whatever they decide to do during the day.”
“Last night we were able to engage in negotiations with President Crystal Williams,” Colannino continued. “Which ended in them not meeting our demands, and we made it clear that is why we are occupying the building for those demands to be met.”
For their part, RISD officials have issued a statement that said, in part:
“We have and continue to affirm our students’ right to freedom of expression, freedom of speech, and peaceful assembly. RISD condemns violence and injustice and does not support any form of hate.”
RISD President Crystal Williams said students now have to take classes elsewhere due to the occupation.
“We are trying to stick by our demands as firmly as possible,” Colannino added.
The demands students want are a total fiscal transparency of RISD’s investment portfolios, divestment from companies that students say fund Israel’s war effort, establishing a student oversight committee for future investments, and a public condemnation of the Israeli occupation of Gaza as a genocide.
“This is what our country is founded on,” Foster said. “This is what happened in 1968 with the Civil Rights Movement. Protest is the life blood of the American democracy.”
