MORGANTOWN, W.Va. About 80 people attended a peaceful pro-Palestinian protest that started on the West Virginia University (WVU) Morgantown campus at the Mountainlair and marched down to the Monongalia County Courthouse on Saturday.

Vice President of the WVU Muslim Student Association (MSA), Omar Sabbagh, said the top priority of the group is an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian relief for the people of Gaza.

“Our message is that right now in Gaza, there’s a genocide happening—Israel is dropping bombs like it’s raining,” Sabbagh said. “There are 35,000 civilians that have been killed and counting—this genocide has been going on for 75 years.”

Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in southern Israel, Sabbagh said the atmosphere on campus has deteriorated to the point where members of the organization and supporters have felt threatened. The top demand from the event was for the university to take action against their religion.

“The first thing we are requesting is for them to condemn the Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian hate that’s been happening on this campus since October,” Sabbagh said. “We have been harassed, we have been made fun of, we have been ridiculed, and we have been humiliated—this is not okay, and the university has stayed silent.”

Sabbagh said counter-protesters have been disrupting their normal activities and have damaged areas they use on campus. Pro-Palestine events, he said, are disrupted regularly, adding to tensions.

“We had a person come to our events, even the ones not related to Palestine, and try to stop us from having the events and vacate our prayer room. This is not ok,” Sabbagh said.

Like other groups across the country, they also want assurances that the university does not hold investments that could somehow support the Israeli government.

“The second thing we want is to disclose and divest their investments,” Sabbagh said. “We want to make sure they are not investing in the state of Israel, a terrorist army that is killing innocent Palestinians, and we want to make sure they are not investing in genocide.”

WVU senior Olivia Dowler also said there are other organizations on campus that are calling for transparency from WVU officials.

“The Muslim Student Association, along with a few other organizations on campus, actually just sent a letter to the president of WVU and some of the deans about disclosing and divesting, so we definitely want to draw some attention to that,” Dowler said.

**A previous version of this article estimated the crowd size at 50