Nearly 500 faculty and staff at Harvard called on university leadership to drop disciplinary actions against pro-Palestine student protesters following their encampment at the school in a letter Monday.

“We, the undersigned Harvard faculty and staff, are alarmed that Harvard undergraduate students who engaged in peaceful protest are being sanctioned in an unprecedented, disproportionate, and arbitrary manner compared to students engaging in similar acts of civil disobedience in Harvard’s history,” stated the letter, signed by 494 faculty and staff members Monday and addressed to Harvard President Alan Garber, Dean Rakesh Khurana and Dean Hopi Hoekstra.

About 35 students are facing academic sanctions, including measures preventing students from graduating and making some withdraw for multiple semesters, for taking part in the pro-Palestine protest encampment in Harvard Yard, Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP) and other student groups said over the weekend.

Student protesters have said that the disciplinary measures violate the agreement between HOOP and Harvard leadership to end the encampment last Tuesday. In the agreement, the president agreed to urge the Administrative Board to follow “existing practices and precedents” regarding pending disciplinary cases against protesters.

“These sanctions undermine trust,” the letter stated. “Students and faculty acted based on the widespread understanding that the university would facilitate prompt graduation, as had been stated in direct communications from the President.”

Students have called the punitive measures “extraordinary” and cited multiple peaceful protest at Harvard that resulted in minor or no disciplinary actions for students, including the 1986 South Africa Apartheid encampment, 2001 Progressive Student Labor movement sit-in, Fossil Fuel divestment sit-ins and blockades from 2014-2017 and 2016 Belinda Hall occupation.

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The proceedings threaten to keep at least 12 students, including multiple Rhodes Scholars, from graduating on Thursday, the group of faculty and staff said. The letter called the leadership to allow all students who engaged in peaceful protest to be “allowed to graduate with the degrees they have earned.”

“The primary outcome of these highly irregular Administrative Board proceedings will be to unduly harm these students’ future employment and current livelihood and to create further division on campus at a time when we should come together to honor our graduates,” the letter said.