Students at the University of Sussex have voted to endorse the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, in an overwhelmingly referendum result published Friday.
The week-long referendum concluded with 68% voting ‘Yes’, and 32% voting ‘No’, after a total of 1,292 votes were cast. As a result, the Students’ Union at Sussex has endorsed BDS.
Commenting on the result, Sussex student and ‘Yes’ campaigner Roua Naboulsi told Middle East Monitor that they were “very fortunate to have so much support on our campus”, including from candidates running for parallel student governance elections.
“A lot of the people we talked to on campus had already voted yes, and there was a positive vibe all week as we campaigned in Library Square.”
The endorsement of BDS at Sussex took place a few weeks after students and staff at SOAS endorsed an academic boycott of Israel in their own campus referendum.