A new pro-Palestinian activist majority on the University of Michigan’s Central Student Government is holding about $1.3 million in student fees hostage in an effort to force divestment from Israel.

In a March election, a Shut It Down party led by pro-Palestinian activists won the presidency and vice presidency, along with 22 of 45 seats in the student government assembly that’s tasked with distributing about $1.3 million in student fees to about 400 groups on campus.

Those activists immediately passed a resolution calling for UM regents to divest from companies that profit from Israel’s defenses against Hamas, and have since refused to fund student groups that depend on annual appropriations until that happens, The New York Times reports.

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“It’s incredibly stressful,” said Nicolette Kleinhoffer, president of the UM ballroom dance team. The team gets the bulk of its funding from the CSG, to pay for competitions, a coach, and rehearsal and performance spaces.

“It feels a little silly to me to refuse to hand out money that’s coming from students to help students,” Gabriel Scheck, president of the men’s Ultimate Frisbee team, told the Times, adding the team gets about a third of its budget from the CSG.

Alifa Chowdhry, president of the Shut It Down party, noted members ran on a promise to “halt the operations of the University of Michigan Central Government” in the March election, when less than 20% of students came out to vote.

UM enrollment data shows most UM students no longer hail from Michigan. Michiganders represented 46% of the incoming freshman class for the 2024 winter semester, compared to 53.4% from out of state, according to MLive.

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Chowdhry vetoed a proposed budget for the spring and summer in June. An attempt to override the veto failed by a single vote a month later.

The money comes from a $11.19 fee per student each semester that not only funds student groups and sports, but also things like subsides for fitness center classes, newspaper subscriptions, airport shuttles, welcome events, and meals for Muslin students to break their fast during Ramadan.

Plenty of groups that endorsed Shut It Down and participated in an affiliated protest encampment on campus this spring are also taking a hit, including Students Organize for Syria, the Muslim Students Association, United Students Against Sweatshops, and others, according to the Times.

UM officials, who dismantled the student encampment, have refused to discuss divestment despite protestors targeting the homes of regents and disrupting UM’s honors convocation. Democrats who control the Michigan Legislature shot down budget amendments proposed by Republican lawmakers earlier this year to withhold funding increases for UM and other state universities with sanctioned student organizations that have “a demonstrated history of supporting terrorist organizations or threats of violence against others,” according to Michigan Advance.

A general fund budget snapshot from UM Public Affairs shows the state appropriated $365,483,100 to UM for fiscal year 2025.

There’s also students who disagree with the protests, pointing to the futility of attempting to influence an international conflict at the expense of students struggling to survive.

“There are people, and I talked to one or two of them, who walked by that encampment and who were worried about where they were going to get their next meal,” Gabriel Ervin, who ran unsuccessfully for student government president, told the Times.

Those students watched “all the supposedly worker-oriented and left-wing organizations on campus spend all their resources on a war that they had no effect on,” Ervin said.

UM administrators last week offered to temporarily fund some student organizations at the request of some student government members to circumvent Shut It Down’s funding blockade.

“It’s crucial the university enforces its rules, that the university upholds its standards,” Evan Cohen, president of Wolverine for Israel, told the Times.

For now, Shut It Down is standing firm in its demands, punishing thousands on campus who are left scrambling to raise funds for activities they already paid for.

“This is an attempt to placate the student body while refusing to engage with the substance” of the protest, Chowdhury wrote in a statement to the Times. “We call on all organizations to boycott this funding and continue to push the administration towards divestment.”