Conroy added that, as of yet, he had not heard any discussion on campus about divestment.

But Associate Dean of Yale College Penelope Laurans, who is also special assistant to the president, said she had visited the group’s website.

“The group running this campaign has every right to exist, but it isn’t an official group and its website’s front page should not make it look as if it is,” she said.

She added that the site’s interface is remarkably stylistically similar to the official Yale website, using “the same Yale blue and...the same front in the Yale name”—design elements that might infringe on Yale’s copyright.

Swenson said the website seems to have been effective thus far, saying that signatures have been “flowing in heavily,” although he declined to specify an exact number.

A complete list will be posted on the website within a month, he said.

Reaction on the campus appears to be mixed.

Dmitri Gutas, chair of Yale’s Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, signed the petition, saying he supports the sentiment behind the move.

“There is a terrible kind of hypocrisy going on here—both Israel and Iraq have consistently defied UN resolutions, yet we have declared war on Iraq and barely discussed Israel,” he said. “If we are going to be moral people, we need to apply the same standards to everyone.”

Junior Leveille McClain, a member of Yale’s Students for Justice in Palestine, which supports divestment, said there has not yet been much discussion about the issue.

“The petition does not represent the exact views of all students groups on divestment,” he said, “but many student groups do support it.”

But Co-president of Yale Friends of Israel Emily Scharfman, a Yale sophomore, said the divestment campaign is illegitimate and unsound.

“Divestment would make a mockery out of Yale students,” she said. “The campus as a whole is not pushing for divestment.”

YDIC’s petition is not the first attempt to promote divestment at Yale.

Students for Justice in Palestine submitted a divestment proposal to the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility last spring, but no official divestment petition began until alumni stepped in during the summer.