Divest from Israel? This is the question facing the University of Minnesota student body this week.

At 8 a.m. Monday morning, undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Minnesota received an email from Student Unions and Activities that linked to the all-campus election ballot. There, they found a political statement disguised as a question at the end of their ballot. This question attempts to co-opt students into supporting the divisive Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement. This is a movement which has been discredited by leaders across the political spectrum as an obstacle to the mutual respect which comes from conversation, cooperation and compromise, and not continued conflict.

Students are understandably confused why this question is even on the the all-campus election ballot with zero additional context or even one public forum to discuss this very complex issue before voting began. Of course, conversation becomes impossible when the referendum question was only approved on the afternoon of Friday, March 2.

Furthermore, contrary to the Daily article posted just this morning, 12,000 professional students were excluded from voting by the question’s BDS proponents. There is something fundamentally unfair about a process which allows the proponents to select their own voters and gives no notice or explanation to the 12,000 students who were denied their opportunity to be heard.

Our friends in our Jewish community, which is slightly more than 1 percent of the University’s student population and is already under siege from a rise in bias crimes, resent being targeted because of their heritage and religion. Student leaders from Minnesota Hillel, the campus’ Jewish student center, have also been clear that they are strong supporters of the University’s socially responsible investment policy which they championed before the Minnesota Student Association two years ago.

They, along with a broad coalition of allies, simply oppose discriminatory divestment that targets the world’s only Jewish state, which is the Middle East’s only true democracy, for boycott, divestment and sanction.

Read More: Minnesota Daily