A Syracuse University conduct process that began in June has ended for one pro-Palestinian student protester – essentially, where it began.
In late September, SU notified Cai Cafiero that it was rejecting her appeal to turn the semester of probation that it levied against her back in July into just a conduct warning. Cafiero shared her appeal with WAER: it is based on what she calls “procedural errors” – which included holding the conduct process during summer and “mishandling” her accessibility accommodations request – and “grossly inappropriate” sanctions for a first offense.
Cafiero submitted the appeal to SU’s Student Experience office, which oversees the conduct process and employs Kyle Dailey, the SU staff member who filed the initial conduct report against Cafiero in June.
After several weeks, Student Experience upheld the initial sanctions, thus months-long process that Cafiero and her faculty advisor Mario Rios Perez – who was also her sole, allowed procedural advisor in the case – call “a full-time job.” They say it required dozens of hours of preparation for conduct meetings, a conduct hearing and the final appeal, as well as multiple meetings with the attorney who worked pro bono with Cafiero, essentially behind the scenes (per SU rules).
“And that's not accounting for the mental load of spending an entire summer not sure if the university I've put four years into is going to try and remove me,” said Cafiero, who is a graduate student in SU’s School of Education. “It’s really hard to do research to try and write a paper with this looming.”
Cafiero is one of about a dozen students punished for violating the Student Code of Conduct, by not following an unsigned SU directive in May that asked them to relocate the campus Gaza Solidarity Encampment. SU claimed the protest tents interfered with its graduation tent, and that Cafiero’s actions impacted SU staff members, graduating students and their families.
Along with probation this semester, which can lead to suspension or expulsion if a student commits any further conduct violation, Cafiero must also hold a 30-minute presentation before staff members of SU’s Community Standards Office (which oversees the conduct process itself). For the presentation, among other things, Cafiero must analyze how her decisions “ultimately affected” her community, herself and her future choices.
“This part is condescending to me, the assumption that this was a decision I made on the spur of the moment, and only after Big Brother and the Conduct Office comes in and says, ‘Did you think about this?’" said Cafiero. "I am a grown adult.”
An activist and organizer for numerous causes, Cafiero also says she understands “that morality and legality are not two entirely overlapping circles.” By which she means that peaceful demonstrations don’t always follow rules, including conduct codes.
Cafiero says her education at SU taught her that, along with diverse injustices in American history that have fueled civil disobedience. She finds it “hypocritical” of SU to punish some of the pro-Palestinian protesters, while celebrating other historic or much larger campus demonstrations, such as for Black Lives Matter or against the Vietnam War.
Cafiero requested and was denied a student audience for her official presentation, which must also explain how students can “actively participate in a protest at Syracuse University while following [SU] policies or procedures,” as well as the resources available to students who want to protest on campus.
WAER sent SU’s Student Experience and Community Standards offices a dozen questions, including whether the university has held, or plans to hold, its own presentation on those policies and resources, but was told that the university “does not comment on student conduct cases.”
Cafiero’s presentation is due in less than two weeks, which for the Jewish student means working through Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in order to finish on time.
Still, she says, despite her frustrations, her case is “small potatoes” compared to the British student protester facing deportation after being suspended by Cornell University over a pro-Palestinian campus protest in September.
