Following the April 2 assault of two University of Colorado Boulder students, the university has decided to cut an aerospace engineering class with ties to the United States government. According to a statement released by Boulder Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), two students disrupted the class, “…that partners directly with the U.S. military and intelligence agencies to train students in building tools of war.”
“If we are able to harm the American empire one colonial class at a time, then we see it as a victory.”
Although it was a popular class for aerospace engineers, “Designing for Defense” has been delisted from the official class search page and is no longer available for students to take. Despite the cancellation of this popular class, with ties to the military industrial complex, one anonymous member of Students for Justice in Palestine sees this as a positive outcome, saying, “It was a class teaching students how to build better bombs for the purpose of colonialism. If we are able to harm the American empire one colonial class at a time, then we see it as a victory.”
In a video posted by Boulder SDS, one student protestor is seen entering a classroom while the videographer stands near the door. After being asked to leave once by former professor Andrew Meyer and complying, another non-CU-affiliated mentor is seen grabbing the student protestor’s kuffiyeh and dragging them out of the class. As the students were outside of the classroom in the hall, the non-CU-affiliated mentor is seen grabbing a student protestor by the their kuffiyeh and throwing them into the wall.
The university released a statement the following day of April 3, in which they claim the student was asked to leave repeatedly by the professor, although, as seen in the video, the student was only asked to leave once. In this statement, CU Boulder also claims it “…condemns acts of violence and does not tolerate classroom disruptions, both of which violate state law and university policies.” CU Boulder released another statement on June 9 stating there would be no criminal charges filed against the professor or non-CU-affiliated mentor after consulting the Boulder County District Attorney’s office. Although the assault was visible in the video, CU states that “There was no evidence indicating the instructor of the class broke any laws in the April 2 incident,” and that the non-CU-affiliated mentor would be excluded from campus following the events.
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