A controversial photo exhibit that was removed from Old Union last month has been put back up following a compromise between the University and the group Students Confronting Apartheid by Israel (SCAI).

The exhibit, titled “Life Under Israeli Apartheid,” was taken down April 9 after Old Union staff received multiple complaints. After working with senior University administrators, SCAI agreed to display the exhibit with its originally proposed title “Hope Under Siege” and new captions.

Ten of the 20 photos will be displayed in the Old Union lobby with a biography of the photographer. This part of the exhibit will display the date and location of each photo, but it will not include captions. The other 10 photos will be displayed with captions in a first floor meeting room.

“It’s all very complex,” a relieved sounding SCAI co-President Fadi Quran ‘10 said by phone Sunday night, “but that’s what we’ve reached.”

Jeanette Smith-Laws, director of unions, and Chris Griffith, associate vice provost for Student Affairs, made the ultimate decision not to include captions for the photos displayed in the lounge.

Griffith said the decision to put photos back up in the lounge without captions stemmed from a desire to maintain Old Union as a comfortable common area.

“We wanted to maintain the comfortable and welcoming environment in the first floor common lounge area while providing an interim solution to the students’ request for exhibit space,” she said in an email to The Daily Monday night. “I think we’ve achieved that.”

From the start, discourse surrounding the photo exhibit has been mired in miscommunication.

According to SCAI members, a group member currently studying in China planned the exhibit before going abroad. The student submitted the photos for approval by Old Union staff winter quarter. SCAI members said the title change stemmed from a miscommunication between that student and other group members who later assumed responsibility for the project.

SCAI members had assumed they could include captions with the exhibit but did not submit them for approval. When the captions provoked complaints, Old Union staff offered to move the exhibit to White Plaza or resume the show at Old Union without captions.

“They decided against pursuing either option,” Vice Provost for Student Affairs Greg Boardman said last month.

The exhibit was taken down 48 hours after it was posted.

More than 50 students and community members marched into Old Union April 21 to protest the removal, which they called “explicit political censorship” on the part of the University. Quran hailed the rally as a critical show of support that helped inspire the University to find a compromise.

“If we didn’t get the attention of students, then they [the University] wouldn’t have cared,” Quran said.

Quran said he reached out to such senior administrators as Provost John Etchemendy Ph.D. ‘82, Boardman and Griffith. After several email exchanges, the compromise was in place.

Etchemendy told The Daily he suggested that SCAI change the title back to “Hope Under Seige,” which he said the student group immediately agreed to do.

Boardman referred The Daily to Griffith for comment.

The new captions “state what’s going on in the picture, nothing more, nothing less,” Quran said. Statistics relating to the broader context of the Israel-Palestine conflict, which were in the original captions, were removed. Quran said the statistics came from human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and the United Nations.

Old Union staff had singled out the captions as a source of complaints.

“People felt it was inflammatory,” Griffith told The Daily last month, adding that “multiple concerns” had been raised by a “broad scope of folks.”

When the photos were first taken down last month, Boardman pointed to a need to iron out Old Union policy regarding student use.

“We have yet to fully articulate the programmatic vision for Old Union that will help establish policies and procedures to guide us on the use of communal space,” Boardman said. “We look forward to Old Union serving as a center where dialogue is encouraged while remaining a comfortable gathering place for all.”

Griffith said Monday that the compromise to put the exhibit back up is a temporary move and that the University has not yet settled on a new vision for Old Union.

“The display of photos is an interim measure until we can convene the Old Union Advisory Committee to address programmatic issues,” she said. “We’re working closely with the ASSU Executive team to identify student members of the committee. We also want to solicit input broadly from the student community.”

Quran stressed that students should work to make sure the Union fits their needs — not simply those of the administration.

“I think students need to make sure the Old Union is made into a place that they want,” Quran said, “the type of place that they’d be happy in.”

“The students are powerful, the students are the University,” he continued. This episode, he added, “shows that anything they want, they can achieve.”