Days after reinstatement, OSU socialist group protests for Palestine
The Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists staged a protest in support of Palestine two days after being reinstated from a suspension for disregarding university directives.
During the protest, students chanted, entered the Ohio State president's office, and held signs demanding a 'Free Palestine.'
After recently being reinstated, a student group at Ohio State University called the Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists (CORS) staged a protest on campus in Columbus, Ohio in support of Palestine.
CORS had been suspended since Dec. 13 for “disregarding university directives, being non-responsive to meeting requests from the organization’s advisors and university leaders, and dissemination of materials that include a logo associated with a designated terrorist organization,” as Campus Reform previously reported.
After being reinstated on Jan. 31, the group held a protest two days later on Feb. 2, according to The Lantern.
The group’s reinstatement comes in the wake of a student petition that demanded that OSU “Immediately reinstate Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists’ student organization status,” which received more than 1,000 signatures.
During the recent protest, dozens of students reportedly chanted, then entered the office of the university president, Ted Carter Jr. Students held a sign that said: “Free the Voice, Free the Mind, Students for a Free Palestine!”
The students also took turns giving speeches and chanting inside and outside the Ohio Union, the campus’ “center of activity, community dialogue and learning.”
CORS, which meets weekly, is described on OSU’s website as an “organization that aims to bring together students interested in left/progressive politics, including issues of civil rights, gender and sexual equality, war and foreign policy, and domestic policy regarding immigration and class hierarchies.”
According to the CORS website, “As a revolutionary socialist organization, CORS is not only committed to fighting for a world without the forms of oppression which dominate our lives under capitalism, but ensuring that our organizational spaces are built to sustain a diverse working class.”
The page continues: “We expect comradely behavior in all of our organizational spaces and take seriously any manifestation of oppression within them.”
“We recognize that leftist groups are not immune from the oppression that is baked into our system. In fact, all too often abusers and manipulators have utilized their identities as ‘leftists’ to provide cover for oppressive behavior,” CORS also states in its Code of Conduct. “In the pursuit of building an organization which genuinely acts as the ‘tribune of the oppressed’ we will work to prevent and handle oppression within our organization and across the organized left.”
Campus Reform has contacted Ohio State University and the Central Ohio Revolutionary Socialists for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
