I wrote about this situation in August and now it has taken a surprising turn. The backstory here is that pro-Palestinian activists at the University of Michigan took a novel approach to forcing the school to agree to their divestment demands. They ran a slate of candidates and effectively took over the student government. As promised during their campaign, the activists immediately shut down the funding of all student groups on campus. 

The defunding started during the summer but it wasn't until most students returned to campus in the fall that people got upset. After all, the money in question didn't come from the school, it was a fee which each student had to pay to fund activities. So the students payed and yet none of their student groups had any money.

“It feels a little silly to me to refuse to hand out money that’s coming from students to help students,” said Gabriel Scheck, a senior, and president and captain of the men’s Ultimate Frisbee team, which receives up to a third of its annual budget from the student government.

The team is one of the few club sports without membership fees. But without funding, the players would need to pay dues and other expenses, like travel, which Mr. Scheck said would increase the barrier to entry.

Enough students complained that the university agreed to a new plan. They would fund the groups the usual amount on a temporary basis and then, at some future point when the student funds were released, those groups would pay the school back. It was a loan to get around the defunding effort. The activists didn't like that plan at all because it meant they couldn't inflict any more misery on their fellow students. They new student president asked campus groups to boycott the money being offered.

On top of that, the whole effort was a waste of everyone's time because the school had already said it would not divest. Now here we are a couple months later and something unexpected has happened. The student government reversed course and restored funding to student groups. 

...in a meeting packed with activists on Tuesday, the student assembly voted to support a petition that restored the budget. And it rejected an opposing petition that would have sent most of the student government’s money to another university’s initiative in Gaza.

The activist student president had vetoed two previous attempts to pass a budget, but this time she was outsmarted by a junior.

In a maneuver that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson might applaud, Liam Reaser, a junior, circulated a petition that collected enough student signatures to prevent a veto according to student government rules. The assembly needed only a simple majority of votes to pass it.

“My impression is that most people on campus don’t really care about student politics, but started to care about it when the vital services we’ve provided for years were interrupted,” Mr. Reaser wrote in a statement to The Times.

The counter move by the activists was to propose sending the entire budget to a group trying to restore higher education in Gaza. That effort failed in a 22 to 16 vote. As you can imagine, the campus activists were furious.

Last night, the University of Michigan's Central Student Government voted on a Gaza Reparations Act. This legislation would have defunded nearly all of UMich's clubs in order to send $440K to Birzeit University.

This measure failed, and the activists immediately freaked out. pic.twitter.com/x9EV7NM1gD

— Stu (@thestustustudio) October 9, 2024

Their plan to use the levers of student government to get their way has failed and all they can do is chant like idiots. Other students are clearly tired of this. Hopefully that activist exhaustion will become a trend that spreads to other campuses.