After 11 hours of discussion between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, the Associated Students Senate voted against the divestment resolution on the table. The 72nd Senate elected to use a secret ballot and saw 13 noes, 12 yeses and zero abstentions. Â
Over 100 community members, faculty and students signed up to speak at public forum last night, but only 83 actually spoke with generally equal amounts of support for and against divestment.
The resolution called on the University of California Board of Regents to divest from companies that profit off of alleged human rights violations by the Israeli government against Palestinians. This is the seventh time since 2013 that a divestment resolution failed to pass, making UC Santa Barbara the only undergraduate UC campus to not pass a resolution on divestment. The Senate will not meet again until Fall Quarter 2021.