When Brown first agreed to put divestment from Israel to a vote, administrators said the decision would “prevent further escalation” and preserve safety on campus.
But students involved in the negotiations suggest an additional factor gave them the leverage to strike an agreement with the University: a dying elm tree on the Main Green.
A feature of the green for at least 80 years, the elm tree died during the 2023-24 academic year after a yearslong decline and needed to be removed before the 2024 Commencement Weekend. The Department of Facilities Management planned to take down the tree in late April, according to University Spokesperson Brian Clark.
The student encampment in support of divestment from Israel began on the Main Green on April 24 and ended April 30. The tree was removed on May 4.
“We were given a timeline and told that they were working on a strict timeline because they needed the tree out,” said Anila Lopez Marks ’26, one of the students involved in negotiations to end the encampment. “It felt like the most immediate pressure point.”
A feature of the green for at least 80 years, the elm tree died during the 2023-24 academic year after a years-long decline and was removed on May 4.
“The most important priority in ending the encampment was safety,” Clark told The Herald in his description of the agreement. “Given the extensive reports about violence, harassment and intimidation at encampments on other campuses across the nation, the potential for escalation was a significant concern. Reaching a peaceful end to the unauthorized encampment was our goal.”
Clark also cited “preparations for Commencement and Reunion Weekend” as a focus of the administration during negotiations.
“Removal of the American elm tree near University Hall was one part of those preparations,” he said. “Given the risks a dead tree can pose, it was important to be able to proceed with removal and restoration of the site well in advance of Commencement and Reunion Weekend.”
Isabella Garo ’24, another student present at the negotiations, said she remembered working at Reunion Weekend in 2023. She called the University’s landscaping preparations “obsessive.”
Facilities Management workers were “just obsessively landscaping and planting all of these flowers and trying to make all the foliage look beautiful,” Garo told The Herald.
A year later, Garo participated in the Main Green encampment in support of divestment. With Commencement and Reunion approaching and over a hundred students camped out on the Main Green, Garo brought up her experience from the prior year.
“I remember specifically saying, ‘I don’t think they will let us last longer than a week, because they care too much about lawn care,’” she said. “There's no way they're going to let us stay here and risk the picture-perfect Commencement weekend that they try to put on every single year.”
Pro-Palestine organizers at Brown put on large-scale rallies throughout the 2023-24 academic year, including during a hunger strike, two sit-ins and the encampment. Marks said that the University’s agreement to a vote on divestment felt like a product of those efforts.
Still, “it felt frustrating that rather than the culmination of all of these other acts being enough on their own to push a vote, it was the tree that, in some ways, had to be that final push,” Marks said.
Haley Sandlow is a contributing editor covering science and research. She is a junior from Chicago, Illinois studying English and French.
