Safety warning to divestment coaltion

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Emails from May 5-6 to Request a Meeting on May 6

From: Engagement Team
Sent: Sunday, May 5, 2024 8:01 AM
Subject: Meeting with President Manuel, Provost Ghanem, [name removed], and members of the Engagement Team

Divestment Coalition   –

We would like to invite you to a meeting with President Robert L. Manuel, Provost Salma Ghanem, [names removed], and members of the Engagement Team on Monday, May 6, at 3 p.m. in Cortelyou Commons.

[Names and titles removed] will facilitate the dialogue.

The purpose of this meeting is to share and discuss the responses to your demands.

Please respond to this email to confirm your participation.

The Engagement Team is committed to and continues to keep the lines of communication open.   

Sincerely, 
The Engagement Team 


From: Engagement Team
Sent: Sunday, May 5, 2024 8:10 PM
Subject: Meeting with the President

Divestment Coalition and faculty advisors:

We have not received any confirmation of your attendance to the meeting that the Engagement Team brokered with the President and other members of the administration to deliver to you the answers to your 10 demands.

You asked for concrete responses to your demands and for the President to be at the table. The Engagement Team worked to make this happen tomorrow at 3:00 pm in Cortelyou Commons.

We are waiting for confirmation of your attendance.

The Engagement Team is committed to and continues to keep the lines of communication open. 

The Engagement Team


From: Divestment Coalition
Sent: Sunday, May 5, 2024 10:40 PM

Dear Engagement Team,

The Divestment Coalition negotiators must reiterate that we will not reconvene negotiations until the following written information is forwarded: (1) a list of all decision-makers (names and titles) who will be present; (2) a list sorting those decision-makers respective to the demand(s) that each individual will be formative in fulfilling; (3) a response to each demand on official letterhead. We also require the following pre-negotiation agreements: (1) the removal of [names removed] from the Engagement Team, (2) written assurance that police will not be in or around the encampment while lines of communication remain open or 48 hours after negotiations come to an official close, whichever is longer; (3) written assurance confirming amnesty for all participants of the encampment action. While the Coalition negotiators do wish to keep the lines of communication open, we must respectfully enforce the above non-negotiable boundaries.

Please understand that we require written (rather than verbal) communication answering the requested information above for clear record-keeping given what we believe was a bad faith and inaccurate misrepresentation of our prior confidential meeting that the President’s Office chose to make public. The administration has also been contacting individual members of the Coalition after hours rather than all members during business hours. Furthermore, please avoid excluding pre-determined members of the coalition without consultation. Moving forward, we will require at least one business day of notice prior to meeting requests. Additionally, as both faculty members and the negotiation team have previously mentioned, the administration has shown a lack of sincerity by disseminating misleading information in its emails to the student body. The Engagement Team can show good faith and repair damaged trust by cooperating with the written information requested and the pre-negotiation agreements.

Until liberation,
The DePaul Divestment Coalition


DePaul's Engagement Team Acknowledging Demands

From: Engagement Team
Sent: Monday, May 6, 2024 2:07 PM
Subject: RE: Meeting with the President

Divestment Coalition –  

The Engagement Team and administration are not able to accommodate all the conditions you described to go forward with a meeting today. To your condition of written responses to the ten demands before a meeting, the administration will share the responses with the entire university community.

In doing so, the Engagement Team and administration remain in good faith committed to continuing the dialogue and coming to an understanding in a timely manner. The president and provost stand ready to meet with you to discuss a path forward. To accommodate the one-day notice of a meeting request, they are available tomorrow.

However, the Engagement Team and administration must emphasize the need for a timely resolution. We acknowledge and appreciate the many ways the Divestment Coalition organizers have lived up to their values of nonviolence and inclusion. At the same time, the conflict at the heart of this discussion attracts forces that do not share the same values and are putting our community at risk.

The Engagement Team is committed to and continues to keep the lines of communication open.   

Sincerely, 
The Engagement Team