Student Organizations Co-host Vigil Memorializing Palestinians Killed

Eleven student organizations from Loyola’s law and undergraduate school co-hosted a vigil Wednesday Oct. 9 honoring Palestinians killed in Gaza and the West Bank over the past year.

The vigil was cosponsored by Loyola’s chapters of the Muslim Law Students Association, the Loyola Defense Coalition, Public Interest Law Society, Latinx Law Students Association, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, International Law Society, Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, National Lawyers Guild, Students for Justice in Palestine, Women’s Law Society and Black Law Students Association according to an Oct. 6 Instagram post by MLSA promoting the event.

The event began around noon in a classroom in the Corboy Law Center and ended around 1:30 p.m. on the street outside Corboy. Roughly 50 to 60 people attended the initial part of the event in the classroom before it moved outside.

Informational pamphlets with a variety of statistics concerning the war’s effect in Gaza and the West Bank were spread around the event space, alongside electronic candles and papers with QR codes linking to the Middle East Children’s Alliance — a nonprofit aid organization based in California supporting children in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon, according to their website.

Members of MLSA requested to remain anonymous in this article, due to concerns over harassment.

A MLSA board member opened the event by addressing a scheduling conflict with the university which led to the vigil being postponed from Oct. 7-9.

They first made a room reservation for the vigil Sept. 15 followed by a request for a larger room Sept. 27, according to an Oct. 8 MLSA Instagram post. Both requests were confirmed, but an email from Anita Maddali, assistant dean of student affairs at the School of Law, alerted them on Oct. 2 they couldn’t hold events during the undergraduate mid-semester break, according to the MLSA board member.

According to page eight of the 2024-2025 Graduate, Professional, & Adult Student Life Organization Handbook regarding: Sponsored Student Organizations, “Graduate SSOs are prohibited from hosting any events or programs during university breaks, holidays, finals or the summer.” 

The Oct. 8 MLSA Instagram post claims this policy wasn’t followed, implemented or enforced previously.

Following the introduction, Shahd Musleh, president of SJP, gave a presentation on the history of Palestinian oppression as context for current events in Gaza. She then described the number of Palestinians who have been killed by Israel as well as the total munitions dropped in Gaza and amount of U.S. weapons support for Israel.

As of Oct. 15 the Palestinian death toll in Gaza had passed 42,000 and the U.S has sent $17.9 billion in military aid to Israel since the start of the conflict, the Associated Press reported.

Another MLSA board member named several individual Palestinians who had been killed over the past year, including professor and writer Refaat Alareer who was killed in an airstrike Dec. 7, according to CNN.

Around 12:45 p.m., the presentations ended and attendees began to move outside the building for the second part of the event. By 1 p.m. all the organizers had made it out to the sidewalk and began reading from a list of Palestinians killed over the last year as the attendees gathered around to listen.

This portion of the event lasted till around 1:30 p.m., and throughout this time many students on the Water Tower Campus walked past the assembled crowd in front of the Corboy, with some joining the group.