College students, Unpacked wants to know how you’re doing right now, 4 months after Oct. 7

In October, Unpacked asked its university-aged readers about how the Israel-Hamas war has been affecting them. Overall, no matter their stance, our readers felt isolated and no longer at home in their college community.

“The silence I feel around this issue when it comes to Jews and Israelis is louder than anything else,” one student wrote. 

“I have already lost a few friends for being a Zionist,” another said. Read the responses from our student readers here.

Ongoing tensions on campuses

Tensions continue to be high on university campuses worldwide as mass student protests and demonstrations continue. Some of these pro-Palestinian protests have also been fiercely anti-Israel and crossed the line into antisemitism.

Here are just a few examples of recent war-related incidents on college campuses:

• At NYU, former professor Amin Husain was videoed saying that reports of sexual violence and the murder of children on Oct. 7 did not occur.
• American University is being sued for allowing students and professors to target and isolate Jewish students in the classroom.
• A swastika was found in the Hillel at Loyola University Chicago.

Checking in with our student readers

Amid the ongoing war, the constant news cycle, and the hundreds of social media posts most continue to see from classmates, Unpacked wanted to check in again on our college and graduate student readers. We want to give our readers a place to vent, grieve and express how you’re feeling four months after Oct. 7.

Have you found a lot of support in your campus community? Have you felt isolated or even targeted? Tell us here.

We will be reviewing the submissions and publishing them with the goal of making our readers feel heard. No matter your situation, we hope to give you a space to feel less alone.

How to submit

Unpacked has opened this Google Form where you can express how you’re feeling about the current situation and what it is like to be on your college campus.

The form gives you the option to share your name, but you can also choose to remain anonymous. 

However, to certify the validity of the response, we will require a valid university email on the form — these will not be shared and will be deleted following the publication of an article with the submissions we receive.

Please keep responses under 200 words and relevant to the topic. 

In the article, responses will be phrased as “a student from BLANK university” in addition to your name, if you elected to include it.

We hope you can find catharsis in sharing how you are doing and hopefully camaraderie with your fellow Jewish college students.