This story was reported and written by VPM News.
More than two months ago, Sereen Haddad walked across a graduation stage at Virginia Commonwealth University, not knowing when — or if — she’d receive her degree.
As she crossed, she raised a Palestinian flag that read: “REMEMBER THE STUDENTS OF GAZA.”
As of July 24, the university is withholding Haddad’s degree over her attendance at a pro-Palestinian event near a campus library in April that the university deemed “unauthorized.”
“The fact that I even have a degree up for debate is a privilege in itself, because there's no universities left in Gaza,” Haddad told VPM News during a recent interview. “People in Gaza are deprived of the right to their own education because the schools and universities have been bombed by Israel.”
She’d written “this is for GAZA” on her VCU graduation cap.
Haddad studied psychology to prepare to serve others — specifically children impacted by war and displacement. Earlier this summer, she volunteered as a camp counselor run by HEAL Palestine, which has hosted many Palestinian children from Gaza who’ve lost limbs in Israeli airstrikes.
But Haddad said the most valuable lesson she learned at VCU wasn’t in the classroom.
“The institution has taught me firsthand how these systems of power react when students do speak out,” Haddad said. “They react with censorship, intimidation, and bureaucratic punishment.”
A Palestinian who said she has lost hundreds of family members in the Gaza conflict since fall 2023, Haddad has spent countless hours bringing awareness to the situation on campus and across the City of Richmond.
Haddad told VPM News she chose to study at VCU because she wanted to be at a university that supported students standing up for causes they believed in.
But she’s been disappointed in how the school has responded to her actions: Last fall, she received two policy violation notices for placing small Palestinian flags on the lawn outside the Cabell Library and for chalking pro-Palestinian messages in the bricked area near the library.
Three Palestinian students, including Haddad, have had their degrees withheld over a pro-Palestine gathering on campus earlier this year. Haddad believes they have all suffered the consequences of the university’s lack of clear communication about what students are and are not allowed to do on campus.
“They basically want me to choose silence over justice. They want me to choose comfort over courage, and a degree over my people and my family,” she said. “But there's absolutely no way that I can stay quiet when children in Gaza are being slaughtered, when they're being starved. As we speak, they're being starved and erased.”
VPM News utilized recordings of the event, recordings of conversations between students and university officials and public records requests to report this story.
On April 29, a few dozen students gathered on Compass Plaza, the lawn and adjacent brick compass rose outside the Cabell Library, for an event that had been posted to the RVA for Palestine Instagram account. It’s unclear who runs the account, but students told VPM News it is a coalition of student and community organizations including Students for Justice in Palestine.
Emails obtained by VPM showed that VCU Police alerted staff of the event the morning of. Aaron Hart, VCU’s vice president of student affairs, characterized it in an email as a “major protest” before the event began.
While students are allowed to spontaneously gather on the lawn, officials told students the event was planned and organized, and therefore unauthorized, because it was posted to a social media account in advance.
The lawn outside the library isn’t available for students to reserve per the university’s interim expression and use of space policy — though the policy also states that reservations are only required for events in which 150 people or more are expected to attend, and students don’t have to get official permission for all events.
Laura Beltz, director of policy reform for the national free speech group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told VPM News that nothing about VCU’s policy states that events could be deemed unauthorized simply for being posted to social media in advance: "If I were a student reading this policy, I would assume that I can use this area without having to reserve it. …
“I think that they need to make sure that the policy is lining up with the practices here. Otherwise, students will just be confused about how to follow the policy. And whenever there's confusion about how to follow policy, I'm worried that student speech will be chilled because they'll think, ‘Well, I don't want to risk punishment as far as participating in a protest like this, the rules aren't clear, so forget it. I'm not going to speak at all.’”
Haddad said she did not make the post nor was she the event organizer, but that the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine group collaborated on the post.
About two hours into the gathering, Gabe Willis, VCU’s dean of student advocacy, approached Haddad and told her and another pro-Palestine student group leader that the event either needed to be relocated to another area on campus or come to an end.
Other students told VPM News Willis likely assumed Haddad was the main organizer since she’s been a prominent face — and voice — at similar gatherings.
“It was an assumption that if people were gathered on the lawn, it must have been her,” said Zahra Jalajel, another Palestinian student group leader.
Haddad can also be seen on video announcing the event’s end, and some of the participating students remained on the lawn outside the library to study, sitting on banners and blankets.
“This organized event is over,” the RVA4Palestine Instagram account posted at 4:13 p.m. “As a reminder: the lawn exists for people to gather spontaneously upon it but the organized event affiliated with this post has ended as of 4 p.m.”
VCU Police approached students still on the lawn, including Haddad, and asked them to either relocate to another area on campus deemed a “free speech zone” or put away the banners and blankets they were sitting on. If they did neither, they faced potential arrest.
Shortly after, VCU Assistant Dean Rachael Tully told students that they could keep the blankets as long as they were sitting on them.
Tully then offered to facilitate a conversation between police and students to clarify the rules, but left and never returned.
“She left us vulnerable,” said Jalajel, who was among those involved in the conversation with Tully.
As university police moved back in to disperse those remaining, one person was arrested for holding a sign.
VCU did not make individual staff members available for an interview about the situation, citing an ongoing investigation and student privacy concerns.
The university also did not answer VPM News’ questions about who ultimately determined the event was unauthorized and why, and what led to the miscommunication about the blankets after students ended the event.
Mike Porter, associate vice president for public relations at VCU, told VPM News in a statement that “despite multiple warnings over a three-hour period from Student Affairs, security personnel and VCU Police that VCU policy did not authorize events on the lawn — but would have permitted the event to relocate to the Park Plaza Amphitheater — many of those assembled refused to relocate to the Park Plaza Amphitheater, only a few hundred feet away.”
While the policy doesn’t specify the amphitheater as a “free speech zone,” that’s what was communicated to students.
Students told VPM News they didn’t want to move there, as it’s not as visible an area of campus as the Compass Plaza where students ultimately gathered.
Beltz told VPM News that she’s concerned the designation of “free speech zones” — usually small, out-of-the-way areas on campus where students can’t really get their messages across — may be on the rise amid the trend of growing restrictions on student speech following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israelis.
She said campus free speech zones used to be more common, but haven’t been as popular in recent years after FIRE challenged them in court about a decade ago. Virginia law currently prohibits the use of “free speech zones” on public Virginia campuses in most scenarios.
“I think that what is happening now is that colleges are adopting somewhat more targeted types of free speech zones,” she told VPM News.
She also pointed out that VCU’s policy says nothing about blankets being prohibited at events.
“The policy says that installation of a structure like a tent, stage, scaffold, bleacher, bounce house or carnival-style ride would need advance permission,” she said. “But a blanket is not reasonably any of those things.”
Language about the Compass Plaza being a “distinguished” area where “prospective students and their families are introduced to the campus during tours” also stood out to Beltz.
“What is the significant government interest in limiting students from being here?” she asked. “Is it because you want to make sure that foot traffic can get through? Or is it actually because you don't want certain messages reaching certain audiences?”
The day after the event, Jalajel and another Palestinian student group leader, Cristina Sayegh, went to the Division of Student Affairs office together, hoping to understand what happened and why.
They wanted to ensure no other students would be arrested or harmed if they continued to gather on the lawn.
“We were told by Rachael [Tully] we were allowed to have blankets on the lawn, and then the cops showed up as soon as you guys left from work and started harassing students,” Jalajel can be heard telling Willis in a recording.
Willis steps away to confirm whether police would be present near the lawn that afternoon. “Y’all will be fine,” he says. “There’s some policy language that we have to work out together.”
Willis tells the students he’ll speak to them further during a meeting scheduled for that Friday, May 2.
But that meeting never happened. Instead, Haddad, Jalajel and Sayegh were notified via email that their degrees were being withheld.
Neither Jalajel nor Sayegh were at the April 29 event when it was deemed an unauthorized gathering; they were in class when officials asked students to relocate. Sayegh also has a full year of classes left before graduation.
“Instead of talking to us about the day, they sent us disciplinary means, basically,” Jalajel said. “It’s really messed up.”
Jalajel got the email about her degree being withheld on May 7 — the day before she was set to walk across the graduation stage.
“For other people walking … they could breathe, and be like, ‘My degree will arrive in the mail,’” Jalajel said.
The day Jalajel got the email, she decided to try to talk to Willis again.
In a recording of that conversation reviewed by VPM News, she asks why the meeting the prior week was canceled — and why conduct notices were sent to students instead.
“I don’t feel comfortable meeting with y’all in person,” Willis says in the recording. When Jalajel asks why they couldn’t have just met over Zoom, he says: “Right now I’m disengaging with the conversation.”
She continues to press Willis, who replies: “It has to do with the fact that each time we have a conversation, there's a level of passion that goes into it that borderlines very much disrespect.”
Students for Justice in Palestine group leaders told VPM News that they’d been trying to meet with VCU administrators in person for months.
“It’s really hard trying to beg your administration to care about you,” Sayegh said. “We continue to do it because that is the stepping stone to make a change. You have to talk to these people who do have the power right now.”
VCU’s Mike Porter told VPM News in a statement that the “standard practice is to issue a temporary degree hold for any senior student pending resolution of the conduct process.”
He added: “VCU leaders meet regularly with individual students and student organizations. Decisions about scheduling meetings are based on a number of factors including: schedule, agenda and prior interactions with those wishing to meet.”
Jalajel and Sayegh were both able to provide evidence to university officials that they were not present when the April 29 event was deemed unauthorized and students were asked to relocate. Their cases were then closed.
“I’m sorry for the stress, I’m sorry you went through all of it,” Kristie Filipchuk, associate director of student conduct, told Sayegh in a meeting about her case.
But the experience left both Palestinian students feeling targeted, as well as Haddad. A fourth student, who is not Palestinian but has been involved with Students for Justice in Palestine, initially had her degree withheld prior to graduation as well. It has since been released.
Jalajel said she thinks the university took the opportunity to “take all four of us” because they’re the four students who’d been in regular communication with university officials regarding similar campus events.
“With three of us graduating, it was their last chance to do something in response to us,” she said.
The conduct complaints were filed by Jimmie Gahagan, a VCU student affairs employee, one day before students were notified that their degrees were being withheld pending investigation — a week after the April 29 event.
Jalajel reiterated that she believes VCU officials are targeting Haddad because she’s been so outspoken about the situation in Gaza, and added that Haddad has received violations at separate events that other students who were present didn’t receive.
VCU did not answer VPM News’ question about how often in the past two years university officials have cited students from other organizations with code of conduct violations for participating in unauthorized events, and this information was also denied through a public records request.
Instead, Porter told VPM News in an email statement that “VCU does not charge individual students based on their membership in a student organization.”
A group of professors sent a letter to university officials in May asking for all of the students’ degrees to be released. Haddad is the only student whose degree is still being withheld. She’s working with Palestine Legal to appeal the university’s conclusion that she violated the student code of conduct for participating in the April 29 event.
Haddad was also initially cited for declining to end the event or relocate when asked by university officials to do so, though that charge has since been dropped.
VCU has told her that if she were to continue graduate-level coursework between now and next May, any further conduct violations could result in her immediate suspension or expulsion.
“No degree can measure the true strength it takes to resist, and no diploma is ever going to validate or invalidate a movement,” she said. “So if VCU thinks that withholding my degree is going to silence me … they’ve profoundly misunderstood who I am, they've underestimated just how deeply this fight lives in people, and how this movement is ingrained in peoples’ veins.”
VCU told Haddad that it would release her degree upon completion of an hourlong class on ethics. But Haddad is also appealing this sanction. Her appeal hearing was held on Tuesday, July 22. She’s now waiting on a response from VCU.
“I think the fact that the university ever suggested that a student speaking out against the genocide of her own family members should take a class on morals and ethics is unethical in itself,” Haddad said. “That in itself was quite ironic.”
