A Jewish Metropolitan State University of Denver student has filed a notice with the Auraria Higher Education Center, alleging she and others faced harassment and defamation on campus in the days after the Hamas attack on Israel, The Denver Gazette has learned.
Sara Rones, a 19-year-old MSU student, filed the notice on April 5 — as required under the Colorado Governmental Immunity Act before pursuing a lawsuit.
The law is designed to protect public agencies and the individuals who run these entities from unlimited liability. Under the law, the default is that public entities enjoy immunity from liability — but that immunity is waived for damages or injuries arising out of wrongful actions in specific contexts.
Dan Ernst, a civil and constitution rights attorney in Denver representing Rones, said the pro-Palestinian protests — which erupted on the campus and elsewhere in the country after the Hamas attack — left Jewish students fearful and unprotected.
As many as 50 students on the Auraria Campus stopped attending classes, Ernst said.
“She (Rones) thinks, and I agree, it’s an awful situation to have students here in America being pushed off of campus in this manner,” Ernst told The Denver Gazette in an exclusive interview.
The way Ernst sees it, campus officials are culpable in not preventing the emotional distress of Rones and other unnamed Jewish students.
Rones is seeking punitive damages estimated at $150,000, according to the notice.
Devra Ashby, a spokesperson for the Auraria Higher Education Center, declined to comment.
The Auraria Campus is shared by three public institutions: Community College of Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver and the University of Colorado Denver.
Protests erupted on college campuses across the U.S. and the Denver metro area in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, which began when Hamas — a militant group labeled as a terror organization by several countries, including the U.S. — crossed into southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Hamas killed more than 1,200 people that day and took more than 200 people as hostages.
Retaliatory strikes by Israeli and ground offensives in Gaza have killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Citing the rising number of civilian deaths caught in the crossfire of the Israeli-Hamas, activists set up encampments across the U.S. in protest.
Pro-Palestinian protesters also demanded that university officials end study abroad programs to the Jewish state, divest from corporations that operate in Israel — a move tantamount to economic sanctions — and deny grants or funding from corporations that contract with the U.S. military.
Tents first popped up on the Auraria Campus last month and remained for weeks. On April 26, the campus police, backed by the Denver Police Department, arrested more than 40 people and dismantled the camp, which protesters promptly re-erected.
Protesters on the Auraria Campus ultimately abandoned their tents after a three-week standoff with university officials.
‘A platform to pressure our political system’
The Colorado protests — and elsewhere — have set off a fierce debate over the parameters of free speech, drawing allegations of antisemitism that has put the spotlight on university administrators.
At the height of the protests, campus officials at both Auraria and the University of Denver repeatedly pleaded — without success — for Pro-Palestinian activists to dismantle their encampment, citing, among other things, health hazards. In the case of the Auraria campus, officials described escalating health and safety conditions, noting the presence of feces, drug paraphernalia, graffiti and vandalism that has cost roughly $300,000.
Today, her childhood home is the center of Jewish student life on the Auraria campus.
Meir — a Ukrainian refugee who lived briefly in Denver and attended North High School for nearly two years — rose to international prominence and served as prime minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974.
“This is a place of Colorado history, but also it’s a place of Jewish history and the history of the state of Israel because of Golda,” said Lena Fishman, executive director of the Golda Meir House Museum & Education Center. “So, it felt like, kind of obvious, that this would be a meaningful place for Jewish students to meet.”
0 Iruzkinak