If you weren’t familiar with Oakland University before Thursday night, you weren’t alone. Not far from campus, even locals at a Detroit bar, watching the team shock No. 3 seed Kentucky in the first round of the NCAA tournament, asked if “that was Oakland, California” or the Michigan suburb of Rochester . (It’s the latter.)

On Friday, after Oakland’s 80-76 victory as a No. 14 seed, students and graduates enjoyed the university’s moment in the March Madness sun. Among them is John Hendley, class of 2005, who watched the game from Florida with his wife, Melissa, also a graduate.

“If people didn’t know who the Oakland University Golden Grizzlies were last night, they sure do now,” Mr. Hendley said.

For all but perhaps the university’s closest followers, a brief introduction may be in order: the university was founded in 1957 through a donation to establish a satellite site for Michigan State University. Initially the campus was known as Michigan State University-Oakland, but in 1970 the name became Oakland an independent university.

In 1997, Oakland University moved its athletics program from NCAA Division II to Division I. A year later, things changed his mascot from the Pioneers to Golden Grizzliesaccording to the university’s website.

Oakland University’s campus feels more like a sprawling corporate park, and that makes sense. There are many nearby, such as the international headquarters of Stellantis (formerly known as Chrysler) and other automotive suppliers.

The university is surrounded by shopping centers with fast food chains and a golf course. Of the approximately 16,000 currently enrolled students, only 2,500 live on campus. And that’s by design. There are few if any public transportation options in the area, reflecting the mentality of a Motor City built for cars first and pedestrians second.

Even Golden Grizzlies coach Greg Kampe commutes from his home in Detroit.

The university is a smaller option compared to the state’s two major public institutions: the University of Michigan and Michigan State University, both of which are about an hour’s drive from Oakland. But for Oakland supporters, the campus felt a little bigger on Friday.

University President Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, who boasted Friday about correctly filling out her NCAA bracket during the Oakland-Kentucky game, said she was “over the moon.”

“It’s really exciting for us,” she said, adding that the national attention was great “for athletics and for our university and for universities like ours.”

James Wissbrun, a 21-year-old computer scientist in Oakland who grew up nearby and has been going to Golden Grizzlies games since childhood, traveled to the Pittsburgh game on a charter bus the university rented for students. He returned at 4 a.m. Friday and got only a few hours of sleep before going to work at his 7 a.m. job with the City of Rochester Hills grounds crew.

“It was worth it,” he said. “I’ve been coming here for a long time, and to actually be a student here and see how far we’ve come is just incredible.”

Mr. Wissbrun said he planned to take the bus provided by the university to watch the team play No. 11 North Carolina State on Saturday, again in Pittsburgh.

Giovanni Moceri, a 22-year-old mechanical engineering major, will also be on the bus. He has hosted watch parties for Golden Grizzlies games in an effort to create a sense of community on campus. Sometimes it can be a challenge.

“Many students here don’t even know we play sports here,” Mr Moceri said.

That wasn’t the case the night before at RJ’s Pub in Rochester Hills, one of the local bars, where the atmosphere during the game was “rocking,” said Russell Luxton Jr., who operates the bar and is an Oakland graduate.

Lights and sirens went off every time Jack Gohlke, one of the team’s stars, hit a three-pointer, Mr. Luxton said, adding that for every three-pointer Gohlke made, “the crowd got louder.”

Who knows what will happen in Saturday’s game? But until then, Golden Grizzlies fandom is reaching a fever pitch.

“We are thriving,” Mr. Kampe, the coach, said after the victory, adding that “everything is in place to get this program off the ground, and maybe this is the impetus for it.”

In recent weeks, a bitter clash over space has erupted in a beloved New York City school building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, where two programs have shared over the past ten years.

It’s a struggle that mirrors the events that created two of the biggest demographic shifts in New York City’s recent history: the Covid-19 pandemic and the surge of migrants from the southern border.

One of the building’s residents, Public School 145, has added more than 120 new students due to an influx of newcomers. The Department of Education has proposed moving the other, West Prep Academy, which has lower enrollment, to a separate but outdated building to make room for its growing neighbor.

The conflict exposes broader fault lines in New York and other major American cities. The nation’s public schools have lost more than 1.2 million students since the pandemic began and are facing major budget cuts as a result. Urban areas with large numbers of poor families have been hit The hardest. By 2031, enrollment could fall by another 2.5 million nationally, much of it due to declining birth rates.

On the other hand, the increase in the number of new immigrant families in New York and elsewhere is helping offset some of the losses at schools well positioned to benefit from the influx. But it has raised questions in some areas about how resources and space are used and could set communities on divergent paths.

The plan to split PS 145 and West Prep Academy has highlighted how painful change can be. A school building is more than a collection of lockers and classrooms. It is often the heart of a neighborhood and the anchor for a village of children and educators.

“It’s always full of emotions,” the school’s chancellor, David C. Banks, said during a news conference Thursday. “One of the schools has to move, and there is a lot of hullabaloo about which one.”

Two schools. Two population problems.

New York City once had 1.1 million schoolchildren. Today, that figure has dropped to about 915,000.

For the system’s leaders, the decline has raised major concerns about the future. About 12 percent of the city’s 1,600 schools had fewer than 200 students last school year.

“Students equal dollars,” Daniel Weisberg, the first deputy schools chancellor, said at a town-hall-style meeting in Brooklyn last fall. “We don’t like to think about it that way, but that’s just the economic reality.” He added: We have too many schools that have fallen below critical mass.”

Migrant children entering the system have helped offset the losses, but only partially, and not in all schools. According to officials, the city has lost more than 120,000 students and added more than 30,000 immigrant students in recent years.

West Prep Academy is a close-knit high school that includes a unique program for students with autism. About nine in ten students are black or Latino. More than 40 percent have a disability.

It is a refuge for vulnerable children who are not welcome elsewhere, parents say. The data shows that by the time students leave eighth grade, they have typically made more academic progress than their counterparts at other schools with similar populations.

But enrollment at the school has fallen in recent years, from more than 200 in 2018 to roughly 170 students this year. The decline has been largely driven by the departure of black families from the area, and school officials say West Prep needs to grow to a more “sustainable size.”

At its neighbor, PS 145, one in three students is homeless; two-thirds are black or Latino.

In a neighborhood with several coveted elementary school options, PS 145 once struggled with a chronically low enrollment rate. But as New York City became an epicenter for an influx of migrants from Latin America and Eastern Europe, the school’s bilingual programs in Spanish and Russian made it ideal for new families from those places.

Enrollment has increased by 25 percent over the past five years and now stands at over 480 students.

The growth has forced the school to make tough decisions about space, teachers said. The library is gone. Therapy sessions for students with disabilities are held in cramped spaces. Media and arts programs have been scaled back.

“These are all things that every student should have,” said Lauren Balaban, co-president of the PS 145 parent-teacher association.

“But we have a problem,” she added. “We do not have the space in our building to provide the services our children need and deserve.”

The Department of Education plans to move West Prep to a nearby building next fall. Built in the 1890s, the building is not accessible to students with disabilities and has no outdoor space. Parents and teachers have wondered whether their school would be treated differently if it served a more affluent and white student body.

“There is a perceived disparity here,” Jennifer Holland, a West Prep parent leader, said at a recent hearing on the possible move. She added that she was frustrated by the choice of an inaccessible building. “You are driving out a population for reasons that are not justified.”

‘It’s going to happen more often’

As New York moves and merges schools after an enrollment drop, other cities are grappling with an even more serious problem: closures.

This month, San Francisco became the newest city district announce plans to close public schools. San Antonio has said it does 15 percent from his schools. Boston could close so many half.

Other cities could feel similar pressure as districts anticipate the expiration of billions in federal pandemic aid, and schools with higher percentages of disadvantaged students are likely to becoming a victim.

“It’s very difficult, and it’s going to happen again,” said Douglas Harris, a professor at Tulane University who has studied the issue.

Such closure plans have led to mass protests and hunger strikes.

Marguerite Roza, a scholar at Georgetown University, said districts sometimes delay changes to “avoid the backlash that comes with announcing school closures.” But putting off difficult decisions often makes them all the more painful, she added.

Officials in New York have tried to proceed cautiously. Closing schools could be politically dangerous for Mayor Eric Adams as he tries to convince the state Legislature to let him retain control of the system — and as he seeks reelection for a second term.

As the system’s finances tighten, city officials have blamed costs related to the influx of migrants for recent education budget cuts. But registration rose this year for the first time in almost a decade, largely thanks to the newcomers.

Even with the new students, schools are still competing for a much smaller number of children.

Some West Prep teachers worry they are being set up to fail. They like being a small community and say it can be difficult to attract new families if the 127-year-old building they could be forced to move into is lacking compared to other local options.

“It’s an injustice,” said Tyi Ellis, president of the West Prep parent association. “Nobody asked for this.”

The Scantron bubbles were gone. So did the page-long passages and the pressure to read them quickly. No. 2 pencils? Optional, and only for taking notes.

On Saturday, students in America took the latest version of the SAT, which was shorter, faster – and, most importantly, all online.

Some exams were briefly disrupted by technical problems, but candidates still generally had a positive opinion of the new format. They were particularly relieved by the brevity of the exam – which dropped from three hours to just over two hours – and the ability to set their own pace as they worked through the questions.

“It’s here to stay,” said Harvey Joiner, 17, a junior at Maynard H. Jackson High School in Atlanta, referring to the digital format. “Computers are what we feel most comfortable with.”

Taught on paper for 98 years, the SAT has been updated to reflect the experience of a generation raised in an era of increased anxiety, decreased attention spans and remote learning. The change comes as the College Board, which administers the test, and proponents of testing standardization say the exams still play a role in determining college acceptance and eligibility.

Disrupted by the pandemic and roiled by concerns that the tests favor high-income students, the SAT has had a shaky few years, with many colleges eliminating standardized testing as an admissions requirement. Some selective universities, including Brown, Yale, Dartmouth and MIT, have since reintroduced the test, but at most schools it has remained optional.

The current version of the test aims to take some of the intimidation out of the process and evaluate modern students with tools they are more accustomed to. The test has been shortened and students have been given more time for each question. The reading passages are much shorter and there is an online graphing calculator built into the application for the math portion, which some see as a way to level the playing field for low-income students.

The tests are also harder to cheat, with ‘adaptive’ questions that become harder or easier depending on a student’s performance. Students can bring their own laptops or tablets or use school-provided equipment, but must not have any other application running in the background, and must take the test at a public testing center with a proctor walking around the room.

Many students seemed happy with this new setup on Saturday. Naysa Srivastava, a 17-year-old who took the test in Chicago, found that the brevity of the reading passages and built-in calculator better reflected her experience as an online learner. “Almost all of my classes are digital,” she said.

Elijah McGlory, 18, a senior at Druid Hills High School in Atlanta, said taking the test digitally was “much better” compared to the paper version. “I started getting more questions online,” he said.

Sharen Pitts, a retired teacher who worked as a proctor in and around Chicago for four years, noticed several of her students echoing the sentiment after the test she supervised Saturday. But she added that some “preferred paper because digital was harder on the eyes.”

Ms Pitts said the main difference she noticed on Saturday with the new format was the reduced testing time, which some teachers see as a negative change for students. Critics of the new SAT have said the shorter exam and reading passages do not help students develop the greater reading skills they need amid constant distractions from technology.

But the speed of the test was offset by a series of technical problems.

Some testing centers delayed the start of the exam as students had trouble connecting to Wi-Fi. Specifically, test takers at Oak Park River Forest and Georgia State University experienced delays of 30 to 45 minutes due to connection issues.

“It took a while for everyone to have the Internet,” said Matthew Schmitt, a 16-year-old from Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. “But this is the first time they are doing the digital SAT.”

On social media, students and parents reported other problems, including math answers that seemed incorrect and calculations frozen on the screen. In New York, Lida Safa, 15, noticed technical issues, such as a student needing a charger at her testing center. And she brought her own calculator, as a stopgap in case the online calculator felt too unfamiliar.

This isn’t the first time test takers have encountered problems with digital versions of standardized exams. In recent years, several high school students taking the Advanced Placement tests online have had problems with functions such as submitting their answers and logging in.

Priscilla Rodriguez, senior vice president of college readiness assessments at the College Board, said “a vast majority of students” were able to complete the new SAT on Saturday.

“Just like with paper-and-pencil testing, digital testing can involve issues with individual students or testing centers,” Ms. Rodriguez said. She added that those who had trouble testing would be able to retake the exam if necessary.

And students didn’t seem too concerned about the setbacks on Saturday. Chicago’s Naysa saw bugs as an inevitable feature of any new system. And Danny Morrison, 16, who tested in Atlanta, said: “I think they’ll become more efficient as they continue.”

Some also liked a feature of the test that puts each student on an automatic timer, rather than leaving the stop and start times up to the proctor.

“It used to be your teacher who had to get the timing right, and you had to wait until everyone was ready to take a break,” says Lora Paliakov, 16, from Atlanta.

Matthew, the 16-year-old from Chicago, noted that “you could work more at your own pace.” Some found that this made the entire testing experience less stressful.

Nerves, however, were another matter. Lida, the 15-year-old in New York who attends Razi School, a private Islamic institution, had taken the paper test in December and had a good idea of ​​what to expect. “But I didn’t know anything about this,” she said, referring to the new format.

So she relied on a few home remedies before taking the exam. A light breakfast. One trick she has used to calm her mind: she counts her fingers by touching each one in sequence with her thumb. And a little prayer before she opened her MacBook for the test her math teacher taught her.

“To be honest? It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be,” she said. “I feel like I probably did better this time.”

Dana Goldstein reporting contributed.

Depending on who you ask, the University of Idaho’s plan to acquire the University of Phoenix, a for-profit online school, is a sweet deal or a potential disaster.

University of Idaho President C. Scott Green said he saw the deal with a $550 million price tag as a hedge against what’s known as the “demographic cliff,” an expected decline in the number of college-age students .

But there are also critics of the university’s plan, such as U.S. senators Elizabeth Warren, non-profit organizations and a trade unionhave questioned why the state’s top public university would partner with the University of Phoenix, which has historically been known for its low graduation rate prices and misleading claims, so much so that it was recently ridiculed on “Saturday Night Live.”

The University of Idaho is just the latest publicly funded state college to consider partnering with a for-profit institution as a way to develop online enrollment. Schemes at Arizona State, Purdue and, most recently, the University of Arizona have produced mixed results as higher education faces an existential crisis.

“There are going to be a lot of universities that don’t survive,” Mr. Green, an alumnus of the University of Idaho and Harvard Business School, said in an interview.

Mr. Green, who inherited a deficit when he became president in 2019, wanted to run the university as a business. He cut spending, laid off workers and merged programs. He has also worked to attract students to the campus in Moscow, a city in a remote part of the state called the Palouse, distinguished by its vast rolling hills covered in wheat. He even published a book about navigating the university through a crisis.

Enrollments across the country are expected to peak next year and then fall abruptly due to lower birth rates after the economic downturn, according to research by Nathan D. Grawe, a professor at Carleton College.

The number of students in Idaho has increased recently 7,400 last fall, an increase of 3.4 percent since 2022. But the future is bleak, especially for a state with one of the lowest percentage of students who enroll in a study immediately after high school.

Mr. Green says the University of Phoenix can provide enrollments and gain. But it carries its own complicated legacy.

Founded in 1976, the University of Phoenix grew rapidly and in 2010 enrolled more than 450,000 students, mostly online. It aggressively promoted its brand and even acquired naming rights to an NFL stadium.

Because enrollment is primarily aimed at lower-income students and veterans, operations are fueled by billions of dollars in federally backed loans and grants. But along with the growth came accusations of misleading representation. Thousands of students said they enrolled and racked up debt but never earned a degree.

In 2019, the University of Phoenix reached a $191 million federal settlement after allegations that from 2012 to 2016 it promoted non-existent deals with companies like Microsoft and Twitter that would help students get jobs. The Federal Trade Commission said it would reimburse 147,000 students as a result of those claims.

Alphi Black, an Army veteran from Los Angeles, is trying to get her student loans forgiven after enrolling at the University of Phoenix following what she says was misleading sales pitches. After graduating in 2018, she came to view it as a disability.

Potential employers “kind of laughed about it,” she said. “They said, ‘It’s not a real school.’”

However, other University of Phoenix graduates say their degrees have been valuable. In December, more than 200 of them wrote a letter to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona in support of Idaho’s takeover.

“We are often dismayed at the level of focus and vitriol directed at our alma mater. It appears that certain officials believe that we should have pursued our studies at another institution,” the letter to Mr. Cardona said.

Jake Searle, a former Army pilot who lives in Kuna, Idaho, was among the graduates who signed the letter. As a working father who found it difficult to attend a traditional campus, Mr. Searle, now 41, earned two degrees from the University of Phoenix, including an MBA in 2019.

“The University of Phoenix was the first out of the gate,” said Mr. Searle, who now works in petroleum marketing. “They were the ones who designed and developed the online platform that I would say every other program adopted.”

The University of Phoenix has done that transformed itself, according to Andrea Smiley, a spokeswoman for the school. It has closed underperforming programs and achieved higher returns graduation since 2016, when it was acquired for $1.1 billion by a group of investors, including funds associated with Apollo Global Management. Apollo Global is led by billionaire Marc Rowan, who led the recent donor revolt at the University of Pennsylvania that resulted in the resignation of its president, M. Elizabeth Magill.

“The University of Phoenix is ​​proud of who we are today and the value we provide to our students and alumni,” Ms. Smiley said in an email, citing “improving student outcomes, positive external reviews by our accreditor, our students’ satisfaction with our career-oriented education and our fiscal health.”

Emphasizing value of enrollment, which the university says it has deliberately shrunk to a more manageable 85,000 students, and net income of about $75 million, the University of Phoenix has been shopping itself big time.

It has not been a smooth process. Last year, the University of Arkansas Board of Governors turned down a proposal despite the chancellor’s push for a $500 million deal.

“Why would you lie down with a dog? You’re going to get fleas,” said CC Gibson III, an Arkansas attorney and former member of the university’s board of trustees, citing Phoenix’s reputational problems.

In Idaho, the plan has roiled state politics. While Gov. Brad Little has endorsed it, Raúl Labrador, the state’s attorney general, is suing to block it. Mr. Labrador is questioning the secrecy surrounding the Idaho State Board of Education’s vote last year that approved the complex arrangement that would technically see the University of Phoenix taken over by a newly created nonprofit.

Members of the Idaho Legislature are questioning the deal, backed by a legal opinion from a state government attorney who says the board didn’t have the authority to approve it. The controversy was sparked then Education News from Idaho announced that the University of Idaho had paid the law firm Hogan Lovells, where Mr. Green was previously chief operating officer, more than $7 million to advise on the deal.

“From what I can see, and from what I know about corporate acquisitions and restructurings, this deal carries significant risks,” said Rod Lewis, a former general counsel of a major technology company who also once headed the board that oversees at the state’s public universities. .

In a recent one op-ed Describing his reservations, Mr. Lewis asked whether the state could be on the hook for a $685 million bond issue planned to finance the deal.

There is also a sense that the University of Idaho may be late to the party. Arizona State University and Purdue already sponsor major online programs, said Byron Jones, former chief financial officer of the University of Phoenix.

“The online market itself is flattening out a bit due to saturation rates,” Mr Jones said.

At the University of Arizona, a budget crisis has raised questions about its 2020 acquisition of the for-profit Ashford University. Robert Shireman, a former deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Education, points to the program, which is currently operating at a loss. as a warning sign that public universities face “countless dangers and complications” if they partner with for-profit schools.

Yet the enrollment gap is not disappearing.

Although Idaho is not among the states expected to be hit hardest, Green said other universities were already trying to poach its prospective students. At a recent recruiting event at an Idaho Falls high school, colleges from across Tennessee showed up, he said.

“Our competitors are already here,” Mr. Green said. “I mean, it was incredible. So, you know, people are going to come for our students because they’re going to be desperate.”

The U.S. Department of Education said Friday it had opened an investigation into the Oklahoma school district where a 16-year-old student, Nex Benedict, died a day after an altercation in a high school bathroom.

The department said in a letter on Friday that it was investigating whether Owasso Public Schools, outside of Tulsa, “failed to appropriately respond to alleged student harassment” in violation of federal law, including Title IX. The investigation is in response to a complaint from the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group.

The death of Nex, an Owasso High School sophomore who was non-binary, drew national attention after gay and transgender rights groups said Nex was bullied at school because of their gender identity. Nex used the pronouns she and that as well as the pronouns he and him, friends said.

After the altercation, Nex spoke to a police officer at a local hospital and, according to a video of the interview released by Owasso police, described how he poured water on three girls who had bullied Nex and Nex’s friends because of the way they got dressed. . The girls then attacked and fought with Nex, who told the police officer that they fell to the ground and at one point “blacked out.”

The next day, Nex’s grandmother and guardian called an ambulance to rush Nex back to the hospital, where they were pronounced dead.

Nex’s cause of death remains under investigation by the state medical examiner. Police said in a statement last month that the death was not the result of trauma, but did not elaborate.

Nex’s death put a spotlight on Oklahoma’s restrictive laws and policies for LGBTQ students and the bullying family members and friends said Nex suffered at school.

Karen E. Mines, acting regional director in the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, said in the letter that the opening of an investigation “does not in any way imply that OCR has made a decision on the merits of the complaint.”

In a statement, the school district said it was “committed to cooperating with federal officials” and that it “believes that the complaint filed by HRC is unsupported by the facts and is without merit.”

Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said, “We urgently need them to take action so there can be justice for Nex, and so that all students at Owasso High School and every school in Oklahoma can be safe from bullying , harassment and discrimination. ”

At a vigil for Nex last month, Robin Ingersoll, a 16-year-old sophomore and friend of Nex at Owasso High School, said Nex identified as transgender and that LGBTQ students struggled to find acceptance in their corner of Oklahoma.

“It’s worse than the bullying in Owasso,” Robin said. “We could all learn more acceptance of others, and become better, so that something like this doesn’t happen again. We could all grow for Nex.”

Ben Fenwick contributed reporting from Owasso, Oklahoma.

A meeting of the University of Pennsylvania’s board of trustees was disrupted Friday by a group of pro-Palestinian students protesting the school’s involvement with Israel, prompting administrators to adjourn the meeting about 10 minutes after it started.

The group of about a dozen students held up their hands, some painted red to indicate blood, and began protesting shortly after J. Larry Jameson, Penn’s interim president, began addressing the university’s board of trustees. It was his first public meeting with the trustees since taking office in December.

“Endowment transparency now! Distance yourself from genocide!” the students sang.

The protesters, who represent a group called Freedom School for Palestine, said their action was in response to Penn’s relationship with Israel, citing a study abroad program, a recent faculty trip to Israel and “donations to the IDF,” referring to the Israeli army. .

“We condemn the Board of Trustees’ support for the genocidal Israeli state, and we call on the Penn Administration to support Palestinian students, drop disciplinary charges against pro-Palestinian protesters, and rid itself of genocide,” the statement said. group in a statement. It added that it was pushing for the $21 billion donation to the university to withdraw investments in Israeli companies or other entities that support the war in Gaza. It was not clear whether Penn had any investments in the country.

Friday’s protest was the latest unrest to rock the country’s top universities since Hamas attacked Israel in October. The campus movement that began as general protests against ongoing Israeli retaliation in Gaza has recently shifted its focus to university funds, with demonstrators demanding that schools attract investments that would support the war.

At Brown University, about 19 students protesting the war staged a hunger strike earlier this year, demanding that the administration adopt a divestment resolution. The idea behind divestment movements, which have also historically focused on fossil fuels, tobacco and apartheid in South Africa, is to encourage university endowments to advance the public good and be instruments of change.

But the Penn campus was in turmoil even before the war, amid conflict over former president M. Elizabeth Magill’s decision to allow a Palestinian literary festival on campus last September. With her leadership already under attack, Ms. Magill remained the target of criticism after the Gaza war broke out, with Jewish donors, alumni and students questioning what they saw as lukewarm statements from her office after the Hamas attack.

Ms. Magill ultimately resigned in December after an appearance on Capitol Hill, where she was questioned about whether a call for genocide on campus would be grounds for discipline. Dr. Jameson, an endocrinologist who previously served as dean of Penn’s medical school, was named interim president to replace her.

Some Jewish students at Penn have spoken out against anti-Semitism on campus, including Noah Rubin, who told members of Congress on Thursday that the university administration had failed to address his complaints.

Penn trustees began committee meetings Thursday, and Friday’s meeting was expected to be the culmination of their work. The Rev. Dr. Charles Lattimore Howard, Penn’s chaplain, opened Friday’s meeting with remarks focused on healing after the unrest on campus.

“There is a lot of division in the world, a lot of hatred and mistrust, a lot of indifferent isolation and indifference, a lot of zero-sum perspectives,” he said, adding: “But some of our students are trying to remind us of another way. . In small and personal ways they try to understand the other side, or at least humanize it.”

Dr. Jameson followed the invocation and began his speech by commenting on the excitement of the students at Penn. “They are happy to be here. They thrive on the eminent academics, research and work that improves the world around us,” he said.

But he was Can not go on, and the cheerful mood quickly changed as chants broke out, started by a group of students in the audience. Ramanan Raghavendran, the recently appointed chairman of the trustees, unsuccessfully made three separate pleas to the students to quit.

Unable to continue, the board simultaneously approved approximately 20 resolutions up for discussion and then left the meeting room.

After the meeting, a university spokesperson issued a statement saying the disruption violated the school’s student code of conduct and that the students had been referred for disciplinary action.

The Freedom School for Palestine had also organized two other protests: a sit-in at a campus building last fall and a “study-in” at Penn’s library in February.

Nine Jewish students from leading universities told members of Congress on Thursday that they feel unsafe on campus, but that their complaints about anti-Semitism had been dismissed by the university administration.

During a bipartisan roundtable hosted by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, students described several episodes of anti-Semitism they had experienced on campus since Hamas’s attack on Israel on Oct. 7, accusing their schools of pandering to violent and disruptive protesters while minimizing the threat to Jewish students.

“I have been told time and time again that the university takes these issues seriously, but no action is ever taken,” said Noah Rubin, a student at the University of Pennsylvania.

The roundtable in Washington was led by Representative Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina. The 20 members of Congress, including Ms. Foxx, who participated were evenly split between Republicans and Democrats.

The nine students — from Harvard, Penn, MIT, Columbia and five other universities — were chosen by the House committee, and the Republican majority on the panel had a stronger hand in choosing them, according to an aide to Ms. Foxx. Committee members looked for students from universities where there had been high-profile incidents of anti-Semitism.

Several Jewish groups showed their support for the congressional committee’s efforts Thursday by sending representatives to the public. But some critics have dismissed the hearings on the issue, seeing them as part of a broader Republican Party-driven culture war against colleges and universities, which are seen as bastions of liberalism.

The discussion, less formal than testimony at a Congressional hearing, was a follow-up of sorts to the Dec. 5 hearing in which the presidents of MIT, Harvard and Penn were grilled over anti-Semitism on campus. The leaders were asked whether calling for genocide against Jews on their campuses would be punished, and their response – that it would depend on the context – provoked strong reactions and led to the resignation of two of the presidents.

Questions about how to preserve free speech while cracking down on disruptive protests have roiled universities across the country since the Oct. 7 attack. While Jewish students have pushed for action from universities to combat anti-Semitism, with some filing lawsuits against their schools, Muslim students and other supporters of Palestinians have also filed complaints describing harassment and discrimination against them.

Several investigations are underway to investigate claims of anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim bias on campuses. The Ministry of Education has opened investigations into discrimination against Muslim students at Harvard and other universities. And the House committee is investigating anti-Semitism at Harvard, Penn, MIT and Columbia, and Ms. Foxx has said the investigation could be expanded. The roundtable would help inform the next steps in the investigation, she said.

Passionate, angry and defiant, students repeatedly said Thursday that they felt scared and abandoned, despite their efforts to be heard by university officials.

“By inviting me, you have actually done more than Harvard University has ever done for its Jews, which is to listen to us,” said Shabbat Kestenbaum, a student at Harvard Divinity School. Mr. Kestenbaum is one of six Jewish students at Harvard who have sued the university for discrimination.

Students, who were not under oath, discussed experiencing and witnessing episodes of violence and verbal attacks on campus. Some said that after being spit on and cursed, they stopped wearing their Star of David necklaces and skullcaps.

They also said that during war-related protests, some of which had turned violent, it appeared that campus police at their schools had been told not to stop demonstrators.

Jacob Khalili, a student at Cooper Union, described staying in a library while a pro-Palestinian protest was held outside. He said demonstrators rattled doors and banged on windows while “yelling anti-Israel, anti-Semitic chants.” He recalled that some people with him called police for help, but said authorities did not intervene.

Joe Gindi, a Rutgers student, said protesters once shouted at him, “We don’t want Zionists here!” and called him a ‘European colonizer’ even though his family had come from Syria. He also said police officers and administrators at the scene did not stop the protesters.

Lawmakers at the round table appeared shocked by the reports and sympathized with the students. House members said they were working to translate information from the hearings and discussions into law.

But some audience members pointed out Thursday that Jewish students aren’t the only ones facing discrimination on campus. A small group of protesters from Code Pink, an anti-war pro-Palestinian group, said Muslim and Arab students were also victims of abuse and deserved to be heard.

“There is a very real problem with Islamophobia,” said Moataz Salim, a graduate student at George Washington University, who said about 40 of his relatives had been driven from their homes in Gaza, while others had been killed. He knew a professor who had been accused of anti-Semitism for being outspoken about Palestinian rights and for inviting a speaker to whom Jewish students had objected, he said.

Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a professor of history, race and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, said limiting Thursday’s discussion to anti-Semitism “ignores many forms of prejudice that exist on campuses.”