Emory protests: Students pass 'no confidence' vote against university president
ATLANTA - Emory University's undergraduate students have voted in favor of a no-confidence referendum against President Gregory Fenves.
About 3,400 of the 8,100 undergraduate students participated in the vote with around 73% saying they did not have confidence in the school's president.
Of those who voted, 2,499 voted in favor of the motion, 844 voted against it, and 58 abstained.
The student vote comes less than a week after the Faculty Senate for Emory College of Arts and Sciences voted 358-119 in favor of the "Motion of No Confidence and Demand for Redress" over Fenves' handling of the protests.
Both motions are non-binding. The decision on whether Fenves should be removed will then move to the Emory University Board of Trustees.
The university released a statement following the vote that said "31% of the total undergraduate student body voted in favor of the motion. While we take any concerns expressed by members of our community seriously, Emory community members are sharing a wide range of perspectives that are not reflected in the motion passed by SGA."
Protests at Emory University
The votes come in response to protests and encampments that erupted on April 25. The protests led to clashes with police and the arrest of dozens of protesters.
Emory officials said the protesters who had set up an encampment were trespassing on private property and refused to leave, leading the school to ask the Atlanta Police Department and Georgia State Patrol for assistance.
The officers used Tasers and pepper balls to bring the crowd under control. Several people were placed in handcuffs and loaded into vans.
Video circulated widely on social media shows two women who identified themselves as professors being detained, with one of them slammed to the ground by one officer as a second officer then pushes her chest and face onto a concrete sidewalk.
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The school claimed that the group were activists who were not connected with Emory, with a spokesperson claiming that the protesters were "attempting to disrupt our university as our students finish classes and prepare for finals." Days later, Fenves backtracked from that claim, saying it "was not fully accurate."
Since the clash with law enforcement, protests on the campus have remained mostly calm with only one run-in with a counterprotester last week.
Pro-Palestinian protesters return to Emory University (Credit: FOX 5 Photojournalist Billy Heath)
Last week, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced it has opened an investigation into Emory University over allegations of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian activity at the college.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.