Feds to study 2024 Auraria Campus demos

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Feds to Study 2024 Auraria Campus Demos

A state panel will investigate last summer’s pro-Palestine demonstrations on Denver’s Auraria campus, as part of a larger federal investigation.

The Colorado Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights voted unanimously last week to start a year-long probe that centers on the question of whether antisemitism played a role in those demonstrations.

Protestors set up an encampment that lasted for twenty-three days, and called for the University of Colorado to sell off all investments in companies doing business in Israel. The committee alleges that demonstrators called for attacks on Jews and for the extermination of the state of Israel, broadly citing “news reports” as backup for those accusations. The advisory committee also says the encampment interfered with campus access and classes, and included a QUOTE “hostile occupation” of the student union. That’s according to The Denver Post.

Critics of the committee, however, said last week the investigations have little to do with Jews, and everything to do with the Trump administration’s goal of dismantling higher education. The administration has already threatened to withhold funding from colleges and universities that don’t address antisemitism.

The Colorado Advisory Committee expects to release a report of its findings next year.

Auraria is home to the Community College of Denver, Metropolitan State University, and CU Denver.

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Housing Program Likely To End

A Biden-era program aimed at helping people in crisis find emergency housing is expected to be eliminated at the end of next year. That could put hundreds of Coloradans back on the streets, according to Colorado Newsline.

The Emergency Housing Voucher program, or EHV, is expected to run out of money by the end of 2026 – four years earlier than originally expected – and that the Trump administration will not continue funding it when it does.

EHV is part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. It provides housing for those who are chronically unhoused, escaping domestic violence, facing housing instability, and caught in human trafficking or sexual assault. Colorado Newsline says that hundreds of Coloradans could soon lose that lifeline.

A spokesperson for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless said that unhoused people typically do not have many resources available to them. She added that ending the EHV program could put many of them back on the streets.

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