Agencies-Gaza post
GW University shuts down its support center for this reason
George Washington (GW) University decided to shut down its student trauma support center, the Office of Advocacy and Support (OAS), to stop giving trauma services to Palestinian students at the Washington DC-based university, according to Palestine Legal, an independent organization dedicated to protecting and promoting the civil rights and independence of people in the US who support Palestinians.
It reported that the District of Columbia Office of Human Rights, following a protest from Palestine Legal, has issued a charge of bias and is investigating George Washington University for declining to give trauma services to Palestinian students and retaliating against staff.
It stated that after a year of retaliating against university staff for supplying support to Palestinian students suffering Israeli state violence in 2021, George Washington University is effectively shutting down an office that gives services to students experiencing trauma.
Last November, Palestine Legal and co-counsel Ben Douglas filed a civil rights complaint on behalf of Nada Elbasha against George Washington University (GW) challenging the university’s particular and discriminatory cancelation of trauma support services for Palestinian students following Israel’s measures to forcibly evict Palestinians in Jerusalem, its violent repression of protests across Palestine and a sequence of devastating raids on Gaza.
While the Office of Advocacy and Support (OAS) had earlier offered healing spaces for Asian students, Black students, and other community members impacted by discrimination and state violence during that same school year, high-level GW administrators forced OAS to extract posts and cancel services when OAS tried to prove similar support to Palestinian students, according to Palestine Legal.
GW placed OAS under an administrative audit in June 2021 and hardly trimmed its work after the office reported trauma support services for Palestinian students. For the past year, OAS has been banned from posting to social media or transmitting with professors on behalf of students.
OAS staff have left their jobs one by one as a result of university revenge and the stifling of their assignment to support students. The hostile campus environment became too much for Elbasha, who left her position as the last remaining employee operating in OAS on June 17.
Instead of choosing to give mental health services to all students equally by maintaining OAS, GW has quietly allowed the office’s employees to resign without hiring substitute counselors, said Palestine Legal.
“Students are rightfully upset. GW is effectively shutting down trauma benefits for the entire community and preventing students from obtaining the help they need all because GW declines to support Palestinians on campus,” said Nada Elbasha.
“The decision to deprive the entire campus community of the mental health services provided by OAS instead of simply treating Palestinians like everyone else is cowardly and wrong,” Palestine Legal staff attorney Dylan Saba said.
