“It felt big, it felt like a moment in time.”
During their time at Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU), Beth Meadows and Laura Yapp – who are both members of the university’s newly-formed Palestine Solidarity Society – had both found campus life to be quite apolitical, with few people holding university bosses to account and little sign of protests or demonstrations.
Amid Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza after Hamas militants stormed into Israel on October 7, the pair felt there was a deafening silence on campus as concern grew over a potential genocide being committed in Palestine.
Surely, it had to be time for that apolitical culture to change, especially as recently as a decade ago there was a Palestine society as well as buildings all over campus showing the university’s pride in having stood against apartheid in South Africa.
“We weren’t seeing any nod to the fact there was a genocide happening [in Gaza] on campus and that silence was felt very loudly,” Meadows told The National.
“We started by doing an open letter about the university’s relationship with Barclays. Barclays has ties to Elbit Systems which makes weapons for the IDF [Israel Defence Force]. It ended up getting around 200 signatures and we met with a couple of people in executive positions to push the demands, but we didn’t get anywhere unfortunately.
“We then thought let’s re-strategise, become an affiliated student society and give ourselves a bit more of a mandate and hopefully affect a bit more change.”
Becoming a student society has not been simple, with the GCU Students’ Association initially asking for Palestine to be removed from the name.
But after more than 50 students and staff turned up to the first meeting to show their support for the movement, the name was eventually accepted and the GCU Palestine Solidarity Society has for the past few weeks been getting stuck into campaigning and demonstrating against a cyber security system brought in which is powered by Israeli-American firm CyberArk.
Meadows, 29, said: “Because that meeting was so successful and there was staff and students there, for GCU which is a relatively apolitical campus, it felt big, it felt like a moment in time.
“We saw that as triggering the U-turn and enabling us to become a society and we’ve now got support from the students’ association.
Psychology student Fatima Rafi, 18, who runs social media for the society, said: “I saw an Instagram post and I went along to the first meeting and there was about 50-plus staff and students and then that’s when I realised this is going to become something big.
“The second the meeting finished I ran up to Laura and asked if there was anything I could do.”
The society has held demonstrations on campus this month against the university bringing in multi-factor authentication (MFA) software powered by CyberArk and, for now at least, members are boycotting signing up to the system.
GCU awarded a £1.4 million contract to tech company Computacenter last autumn, which supplies the MFA software created by CyberArk.
Omer Grossman, CyberArk’s chief information officer, served in the Israeli Defence Force for 25 years and students are hugely concerned the company’s software being embedded into university life does not align with the institution’s proclamation to be the University for the Common Good.
GCU has said it is mandatory for students to sign up to the MFA system over the coming months and while boycotting it has so far not caused society members too many problems, every day CyberAark is creating more barriers for them and they have been told they will eventually not be able to get onto the online learning system if they do not sign up.
Rafi said: “I’m not as proud to go to GCU now. All we want to do is do our work and we didn’t think it would be this deep. It feels worrying it’s this embedded.”
Meadows added: “GCU prides itself as the University of the Common Good and that’s why a lot of people apply and we feel that the contract with a company like CyberArk really undermines that mission.
“We can do better and GCU should do better.”
The fast impact of the society was shown when this week the students’ association called an emergency meeting over the society’s calls for a boycott of CyberArk, something Meadows described as “quite unprecedented”.
It was hoped the organisation would get behind the society’s boycott but it was voted down, which has created a potential stumbling block for the group in continuing their action.
However, they plan to proceed with their protest for now and have insisted this “barrier” will not get in the way of them standing up for Palestine and holding the university to account.
Yapp (below) said following a meeting on Tuesday: “We understand that participating in this boycott puts a massive barrier between ourselves and our education as it is integrated into our online library system and will eventually be embedded into where we submit assignments.
“Alongside our boycott of the CyberArk MFA we will be exploring other avenues which could broaden the scope of our campaign.”
Meadows: “We’re not going to let it deter us. We know in any civil rights, liberation movement there’s always so many barriers put in the way. So it definitely won’t deter us from being a society.”
Rafi added: “Even if nothing happens with CyberArk, we still need to make sure we can speak up and criticise the university over things we don’t agree with. We have that right and we want to use it.”
A GCU spokesperson said: “Cybersecurity is something Glasgow Caledonian University takes extremely seriously. It is essential that we do everything we can to protect the information and systems that are critical to supporting our students’ learning, staff, and the security of our organisation.
“We are aware that a group is lobbying our wider students to boycott our identity access system. The software has been licensed for use by the university via Computacenter and has been in use for over a year.
“We do not have a direct contract or relationship with CyberArk.
"We have reached out and met representatives of the group and are happy to continue our discussions with them. We have also written to our students so they have accurate information.
"We are of course supportive of our students' right to peaceful protest and campaigning. As a university we welcome a diversity of views and believe everyone in our very broad and multicultural community should be treated with courtesy and respect.”
The students' association said: "A motion 'to end the University’s relationship with CyberArk' was put by the protestors to Student Voice – the democratic process of the GCU Students’ Association - but was not supported at the vote."
