When campus climate is used as a political weapon, it degrades the concept and hurts all students. That’s what happened last Friday when the California Assembly’s Select Committee on Campus Climate held a hearing at UCLA’s James West Alumni Center to discuss campus climate issues throughout the state of California.

A lot has been said about Graduate Students Association President Milan Chatterjee’s behavior during his term of office. And frankly, it would be great if the issues around the GSA president and his conduct simply disappeared.

In October 2015, the president of the Graduate Students Association told the Diversity Caucus that it would fund their Diversity Caucus Town Hall event only on the condition that the event have “zero connection” to the “Divest from Israel” movement – a reference to the student movement campaigning to divest specifically from American and international corporations violating Palestinian rights.

Whoever asked the American Center for Law and Justice to weigh in on the Graduate Student Association funding scandal should have told them the whole story.

It has recently been reported that the Graduate Student Association has adopted a policy to deny student funding to groups that endorse or are even connected to campaigns in support of divestment from companies that violate Palestinian human rights.