Campus Protests Led to More Than 3,100 Arrests, but Many Charges Have Been Dropped
The spate of pro-Palestinian protests and encampments engulfed academic institutions of all sizes in nearly every part of the country.
As pro-Palestinian demonstrations rocked college campuses this spring with protests of the war in Gaza, many university administrators found themselves eager to quell the action however they could. Some negotiated with the demonstrators. Many sent in the police.
When Columbia University called in the police in April to break up an encampment, it was the first major detainment of protesters. Since then, more than 3,100 people have been arrested or detained on campuses across the country. Most were charged with trespassing or disturbing the peace. Some face more serious charges, like resisting arrest.
But in the months since, many of the charges have been dropped, even as some students are facing additional consequences, like being barred from their campuses or having their diplomas withheld.
Delia Garza, the prosecutor in Travis County who dropped criminal trespassing charges against more than 100 people arrested at the University of Texas at Austin, said that such charges were rarely a priority for prosecutors, since they are minor and nonviolent offenses. Ms. Garza, a Democrat, said she also calculated that jurors in her community would very likely determine that students protesting on their own campus were simply exercising First Amendment rights.
At some universities, the decision to drop the charges was met with disappointment. “Actions that violate laws and institutional rules should be met with consequences,” Mike Rosen, spokesman for the University of Texas at Austin, said.
Many charges were also dropped among the thousands of people who were arrested in the racial justice protests of 2020, with some prosecutors saying they would focus only on defendants who were caught destroying property or looting, not those who were merely demonstrating.
“The goal isn’t to punish people,” said Hermann Walz, a defense lawyer and former prosecutor and who teaches criminal law at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “It’s to clear the streets.”
According to data collected by The New York Times, protesters were detained this year at more than 70 schools in at least 30 states, from Arizona State University, with its 80,000 students, to the University of Mary Washington in Virginia, with a student body of under 4,000.
Historians who study student movements say the United States hasn’t seen such a large number of people arrested in campus protests in 50 years. While millions of students participated in protests against the Vietnam War, there were about 4,000 arrests at campus protests in the spring of 1969, during the most intense period of activity.
The pro-Palestinian activism “is a relatively small movement,” said Robert Cohen, a historian at New York University, “but the arrests are almost comparable to the height of the Vietnam protests.”
Here’s a closer look at three schools where the number of arrests was significant.
Indiana University Bloomington
57 Arrests
Bryce Greene, a 26-year-old doctoral student at Indiana University Bloomington, which has more than 40,000 students, said students there saw encampments at other schools and decided to protest in solidarity.
“This war is an American war,” Mr. Greene said, citing U.S. military and financial support for Israel. “So we have a responsibility as Americans and people within American institutions to fight back.”
After Mr. Greene and other students erected tents in Dunn Meadow, a green space on campus that in 1969 was designated as a public forum for free expression, the university called in the police. Administrators had learned of the planned protest and abruptly changed campus rules to prohibit temporary structures without prior permission.
Nearly 60 people, mostly students, were arrested and charged with trespassing. The local prosecutor’s office has dropped those charges, calling the arrests “constitutionally dubious.” (One person was charged with felony battery for biting an officer.)
The university had also issued campus bans to the people arrested but eventually dropped them for all but a handful of protesters, including Mr. Greene. He faced a five-year ban from campus, but the Indiana University Police Department lifted it after Mr. Greene appealed.
University of Texas at Austin
136 Arrests
The University of Texas at Austin was among the first schools in a southern, Republican-controlled state where the police arrested protesters. There, university leaders informed protest organizers that their event “may not proceed as planned.”
When students gathered anyway, on April 24, Gov. Greg Abbott directed state police to deploy to the campus, and officers wielding batons arrested dozens of people. They were all charged with trespassing.
The local prosecutor’s office dropped all the trespassing charges, citing problems with the evidence. Some of those arrested that day are facing campus discipline, including having transcripts and diplomas withheld.
Five days later, 80 more people were arrested after students set up tents. Benjamin Kern, a rising senior studying hydrology and water resources, said he joined the encampment knowing that he would very likely go to jail for doing so, but he assumed the charges would be dropped. He said he wanted to show support for the Palestinian people and opposition to his university’s investments in weapons manufacturers.
“I believe as a student, I have a right to go to my university and ask for change,” he said.
On June 26, Ms. Garza, the Travis County attorney, announced that she had decided to drop all of the trespassing charges against the people arrested on April 29, including Mr. Kern’s.
Ms. Garza said that the body camera footage she saw showed a chaotic scene, with police officers in riot gear pushing students as an order to disperse could be heard in the background. She said it would be “incredibly difficult” to prove that the people arrested had heard that order and refused to comply.
Mr. Kern and others arrested at the University of Texas are still facing campus disciplinary proceedings and could face punishments ranging from a written warning to expulsion.
University of Virginia
27 Arrests
The largest number of people arrested on any single day was about 400 across nine campuses on April 30. But protests continued even as many campuses headed into final exams and graduation. In early May, there were 130 arrests at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and 33 at the University of Pennsylvania.
At the University of Virginia on May 4, as students were preparing for final exams, administrators called in the police to break up an encampment. Police officers in riot gear used chemical irritants to get protesters to disperse and eventually arrested 27 people.
The local prosecutor dropped the charges facing seven people after he determined there wasn’t enough evidence. He offered the rest an agreement: Their charges would be dismissed in August if they didn’t have any outstanding criminal charges at that time.
Eleven students faced disciplinary proceedings at the university; four of them were seniors whose diplomas were withheld, including Cady de la Cruz, 22, who just completed her degree in anthropology. She said she joined the encampment to protest what she saw as an ongoing genocide in Gaza and her university’s ties to it. As of early July, she said she had not received information about when she would get a hearing on the status of her diploma, and was worried the process could stretch into the fall.
Ms. De la Cruz said she was not sure what that could mean for her job search. “I can’t easily step out of the university,” she said. “There’s this tether keeping me back.”
A spokesperson said the university did not comment on student disciplinary proceedings.
The arrests and onset of summer vacation have not fully quelled protest action. At Indiana University, students are still sleeping in tents on Dunn Meadow. Mr. Greene, the doctoral student, said that before his ban from campus was lifted, he went to the encampment every day but never left the sidewalk, which is city property.
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