Students were braced for a stalemate. There was an Ultimate Frisbee team without money to compete, an airport shuttle whose cost to students almost doubled without a campus subsidy, and a ballroom dance team unable to rent rehearsal space.
At the University of Michigan, many student activities are usually funded or subsidized by the Central Student Government, known as C.S.G., an elected undergraduate and graduate council that decides how to dole out roughly $1.3 million annually to about 400 groups.
But last spring, pro-Palestinian activists, running under the Shut It Down party, won control over the student government. They immediately moved to withhold funding for all activities, until the university committed to divest from companies that profit from Israel’s war in Gaza.
University regents, though, have consistently said that divestment is off the table. And as students returned to school, the campus seemed to be at a virtual standstill.
“It’s incredibly stressful,” said Nicolette Kleinhoffer, president of the ballroom dance team. The team relies on the student government for the majority of its funding, which covers competitions, a coach and rehearsal and performance space.
The student government takeover was a novel strategy for pro-Palestinian activists, who have battled Michigan’s administration as it dismantled encampments and disciplined protesters.
But as school began, some questioned whether the shutdown would provoke a backlash, and what the university would do in response.
The student government’s budget comes not from the university endowment, but from student fees — $11.19 per student each semester. Last year, that money subsidized access to fitness center classes, newspaper subscriptions and an airport shuttle. The student government sponsored a welcome event for the university’s gender and sexuality center, as well as iftars — the daily meal taken at sundown to break the fast during Ramadan — for more than 300 participants.
“It feels a little silly to me to refuse to hand out money that’s coming from students to help students,” said Gabriel Scheck, a senior, and president and captain of the men’s Ultimate Frisbee team, which receives up to a third of its annual budget from the student government.
The team is one of the few club sports without membership fees. But without funding, the players would need to pay dues and other expenses, like travel, which Mr. Scheck said would increase the barrier to entry.
When campaigning for student government, the Shut It Down party did not keep its intentions a secret. Its platform “ran with one single point: to halt the operations of the University of Michigan Central Student Government,” Alifa Chowdhury, the president of the party, wrote in a statement to The Times. Other members of the group declined to comment.
In the March election, in which less than 20 percent of students turned out to vote, Shut It Down won the presidency and vice presidency, and secured 22 of 45 seats in the assembly.
After the election, the new leaders of the student government passed a resolution, calling for the university’s regents to divest. In May, Ms. Chowdhury issued a statement condemning the university’s decision to call in police to break up the protest encampments.
Since then, however, there has been near silence from the student leaders. Some assembly members said they have not heard from Ms. Chowdhury officially since June, after she vetoed a proposed budget for the spring and summer. (Ms. Chowdhury said that with the decision, she also sent an explanatory memo.) In July, an attempt to override her veto failed by one vote.
Some of the almost two dozen groups that endorsed Shut It Down were also at risk of losing funding, including Students Organize for Syria, the Muslim Students Association and United Students Against Sweatshops.
Ali Allam, co-chair of the Muslim Coalition and the Islamophobia Working Group, is not a member of the Shut It Down party, but he said he agrees with the mandate for change.
“This is a student movement that, for over 20 years, long before October, has protested,” with little success, he said. “It seems that every option has been exhausted and that when that happens, there’s only so much you can do as a student movement.”
Support went beyond like-minded political groups. Sarah Shaw-Nichols, a junior and the president of the university’s stand-up comedy club, wanted to start a late-night talk show.
Even though her project was threatened, “the sacrifice is worth it,” she said.
“Something needed to change,” Ms. Shaw-Nichols said of the university’s investments.
But some view the funding freeze and the protest encampments as futile — trying to influence an international issue at the expense of students, especially ones living on the financial edge.
“There are people, and I talked to one or two of them, who walked by that encampment and who were worried about where they were going to get their next meal,” said Gabriel Ervin, who ran unsuccessfully for student government president on a platform that prioritized workers’ rights.
What those students saw, he said, were “all the supposedly worker-oriented and left-wing organizations on campus spend all their resources on a war that they had no effect on.”
Last week, there was a temporary workaround. At the request of some student government members, the university’s administration agreed to temporarily fund organizations on the condition that it be fully reimbursed, according to Colleen Mastony, a university spokeswoman.
Some students applauded the move. “It’s crucial the university enforces its rules, that the university upholds its standards,” said Evan Cohen, a senior and president of Wolverine for Israel, which supports Israel and its ties to the U.S.
Others saw something paradoxical in the outcome — and wondered whether student government leaders inadvertently just gave up more power.
“They’ve traded in the chance to have students give out money to having the administration give out money,” said Tyler Watt, a law student who serves in the student assembly, but not as a Shut It Down member.
For her part, Ms. Chowdhury urged her peers to not give in — and refuse the administration’s financial offer.
“This is an attempt to placate the student body while refusing to engage with the substance” of the protest, she said in a statement. “We call on all organizations to boycott this funding and continue to push the administration towards divestment.”