Students, staff and faculty gathered at Skylight Park Plaza Oct. 8 to honor Marcellus Williams and victims of the war in Gaza. They were met by administrators instructing them to disband.
The organizers of the vigil did not fill out the “Protest and Demonstration Advance Notification Form,” as required by the university’s space use policy.
Amanda Achin, an administrative assistant for the university and member of the Beacon Coalition, said in a speech that she was threatened with disciplinary action for participating.
“It’s shameful. This is the only public university in Boston. We are working-class people trying to survive in this world — trying to learn, trying to take up the social issues of today,” she said. “Now they’ve got HR here. They asked me if I was staff. They threatened to discipline me. ‘All these discipline charges if you don’t fill out the forms’ — that’s a thing they just told me.”
“I’ve been protesting on this campus since 2008 … They never banned us from protesting right here. We always protested right here. You know why? Because that’s where the people are, that you see all the students. It’s the best place to build community on this campus,” Achin continued.
A spokesperson for the university did not respond to a request for comment.
The vigil was organized by the Beacon Coalition for Action to mourn the death of Marcellus Williams, a Black man executed by the state of Missouri Sept. 24 despite questions of his innocence. Students for Justice in Palestine co-sponsored the event — which took place one year and one day after the deadly attacks on Israel and Gaza Oct. 7, 2023 — as part of their Week of Rage campaign.
“We’ve assembled these poster boards with names of some 5000 of the dead. I mean, to fit all of the dead on poster boards would require like 200, 300 poster boards,” Max Herschman, Jewish liaison for SJP, said in an Oct. 7 interview. “These are real people with real lives with dreams and experiences.”
Organizers set up battery-powered candles, which remained on the plaza after dark. During the vigil, they passed out pens and paper for attendees to leave notes.
“When Marcellus died, it really hurt me because he could have been me. He could have been my brothers. He could have been my cousin, my best friend,” Gibby Caicedo, a member of the Beacon Coalition for Action, said. “That night, I could not stop crying. All I thought about were his brothers, the victim’s family, how everyone knew this man should not die and he died nonetheless.”
“I want to say thank you to everyone for coming here and allowing my vision to come true. I want to say thank you for being brave and opening yourself up, for allowing yourselves to come here around other people and feel your pain, which is one of the bravest acts any of us can do,” Caicedo said.
Participant Carrie Mays also thanked the attendees, encouraging them to build community. She said, “Build relationships with one another. Let’s pour into each other and continue to pour into each other and love on one another.”
Editor’s Note: Administrators repeatedly and incorrectly instructed The Mass Media that university policy prohibited them from taking photos of individuals at the demonstration. One administrator told The Mass Media they were not allowed to be present without press credentials and permission from the Campus Center and Event Services office, citing a vague explanation about commercial activity. There is no law or policy to that effect. The Mass Media is a university-funded student organization and does not turn a profit.
This article appeared in print on Page 1 of Vol. LVIII Issue V, published Oct. 21, 2024.