On September 29th, USC subjected its Armenian student population to unimaginable cruelty. In our period of mourning, USC Annenberg not only refused to cancel an event celebrating Turkish foreign policy but also responded to student efforts with excessive use of force. The All-Armenian Student Association condemns in the strongest possible terms the use of force against peaceful protestors and is ashamed of university administration for its call to resort to the physical censorship of student voices. USC ASA members exercised exclusively peaceful tactics of civil disobedience and did not partake in non-peaceful acts, which we condemn.
The ongoing ethnic cleansing of Artsakh Armenians, carried out by Azerbaijan and directly supported by Turkey, is an ongoing and fresh source of pain for the Armenian-American community. All-ASA finds it absolutely unacceptable that USC made the decision to give genocide denial a platform on campus. The decision not to cancel the event caused great suffering to the Armenian community at USC and the broader Armenian-American community in Los Angeles. Ultimately, the message we received was that for USC, hosting this event outweighed the emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing of its students during this highly sensitive time.
