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