Though only two-thousand students participated in the referendum, anti-Israel students tried to spin the results as an exercise in eduction. In actuality, this first student-wide BS vote, and first of its kind at an ivy-league university, is a crushing defeat for Israel haters and the fifth humiliation of its sort this month, following anti-BS votes at the University of New Mexico, UT Austin, UCSB and San Diego State University.
A student leader of Princeton's No Divest coalition summed up the group's success in an interview with the Daily Princetonian:
"We were just really proud that the majority of the voting students saw through the misleading language of the referendum and ended up rejecting what we saw as a counterproductive proposition, especially coming from the University forum,” she said. ”We don’t believe that it’s a productive policy tool to improve the status quo in the region.”Students at Princeton who actually care about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict lead the opposition to the BS vote and are instead pushing for investment in the region. The initiative, called "Tigers Together" is supported by No Divest, the same group responsible for defeating the BS motion.
“Tigers Together wants to have as positive and constructive and immediate of an impact as possible on the ground by supporting organizations that work on development issues for Israelis and Palestinians, like entrepreneurship and water scarcity,” Backman said, adding that Tigers Together has already begun fundraising for such organizations.
She explained that next year, Tigers Together will also launch an internship program that will send students to Israel or Palestine, so that they can bring firsthand perspectives on the region back to campus. The organization is seeking faculty from a diverse arena of academic disciplines, including the Wilson School and development-oriented fields, Backman noted.
“We think the more students that know about the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians, the better,” she said, adding that the No Divest coalition is happy that there is dialogue on campus concerning the Israeli-Palestinian relationship.
