Northwestern student activists wrapped up the second “Disorientation Week: What Northwestern Won’t Teach Us” —  a series of 22 education and social events raising awareness on the University’s history of movement building — on Sunday.

The week’s programming included a kickoff event on Oct. 6 that featured Fossil Free NU, Students Organizing for Labor Rights, the Native American and Indigenous Student Alliance, NU Community Not Cops, Students for Justice in Palestine and Reform CAPS.

Each organization presented the history of several different movements at NU, including alumni speakers from NUCNC and Reform CAPS, stressing the importance of developing new leadership to continue the work of the movement, prolonging the legacy of the club. 

SESP junior and Jasmine Collective member Anusha Kumar said Disorientation Week was an effort to “orient” students to things NU doesn’t want them to know. 

The first Disorientation Week, which was inspired by University of Chicago’s event series of the same name, was hosted in January. 

“I think it’s just a really great way to show solidarity across different groups, and to really bring in more individuals in the Northwestern community to like activism and advocacy spaces on campus,” Kumar said. 

Each event was attended by 10 to 15 people, she said. 

During this year’s Disorientation Week, SJP hosted an Oct. 6 talk titled “Palestine Advocacy & Encampment at NU: Recap and Reflections” that discussed the April pro-Palestinian encampment on Deering Meadow and how the organization could have better handled it. 

In particular, SJP organizers said they had caused a “myriad of harm” to the national student movement for Palestine and acknowledged the need to address this harm or risk setting a precedent. They also mentioned many people within the encampment had differing opinions of the agreement.

Kumar and Weinberg senior and Jasmine Collective member Sanjana Rajesh hosted an event titled “Debunking Dialogue: NU’s Weaponization of Free Speech” Friday.

Rajesh said though the Jasmine Collective’s focus is on experiences within the South Asian diaspora, they focused their event on a range of topics that people could relate to. 

They focused their talk on the suppression of free speech within the history of activism at NU. They mentioned how many protesters are villainized but commended later in history, like anti-Vietnam War activists. 

The University often believes in fostering dialogue between disagreeing groups, but this dialogue often negatively impacts marginalized communities, Rajesh said. 

“I think Northwestern likes to use dialogue as a way to try to get their way out of talking about actual political issues,” Rajesh said. “It’s not fair for the University to put marginalized communities and their oppressors in the exact same room and claim it as a debate when things are fundamentally unequal.”

Kumar and Rajesh added that dialogue should be about creating solidarity and collective care while building relationships and learning from each other. 

Medill senior Max Sullivan attended a talk about “Ecocide in Palestine” hosted by NU Graduate Workers. The event described the mass environmental destruction experienced in Palestine as a result of the Israel-Hamas War. 

“I think the thing that struck me the most is thinking about ecocide as another method of war of choosing to target rather than the human aspect, choosing to target everything that makes living possible,” Sullivan said. 

Sullivan said ze chose to come to this event because this topic is often underrepresented when talking about what is happening in Palestine.

It’s important to understand other instances of environmental destruction throughout history to contextualize the destruction in Gaza, ze said. 

“I think things like this are urgently necessary,” Sullivan said. “The topics that are being covered are intentionally chosen because they are the exact things that (need to be) from a Northwestern perspective.”

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