Indian-American student Megha Vemuri was barred from the commencement event Friday after the class president used her platform to speak for Palestine a day before. Vemuri was scheduled to be the marshal for Friday’s commencement ceremony but MIT Chancellor Melissa Nobles sent her an email Friday morning saying that she could not attend the event and she and her family were banned from campus for most of the day, Boston Globe reported. “Participation in Commencement activities is a privilege,” Nobles wrote in the email. “You deliberately and repeatedly misled Commencement organizers. While we acknowledge your right to free expression, your decision to lead a protest from the stage, disrupting an important institute ceremony, was a violation of MIT’s time, place and manner rules for campus expression.”Vemuri replied to the mail and said that her speech amounted to “a protest from the stage” and the campus ban was “an overreach”. An MIT spokesperson in a statement said the institute “stands by its decision” to bar Vemuri from campus and said the speech she gave “was not the one that was provided by the speaker in advance.”
Protest erupts over ban on Vemuri
Melissa Nobles had to halt her speech on Friday because of the chants from students who protested the ban on Vemuri. “Excuse me, I respect that you have a message to send but this is not the time or place,” Nobles said over the sound of the protest on Friday. “Today is about our graduates and their families. Please respect them and allow me to continue.”Vemuri slammed MIT in her speech for its ties with Israel and accused MIT of being “directly complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people”. “You have faced the obstacle of fear before and you turned it into fuel to stand up for what is right. You showed the world that MIT wants a free Palestine,” Vemuri said to loud cheers.
