Many charges brought during campus protests have been dropped

As pro-Palestinian demonstrations rocked college campuses this spring in protest of the war in the Gaza Strip, many university administrators were eager to quell the action by any means possible. Some negotiated with the protesters. Many called in the police.

In April, Columbia University called in police to break up an encampment, the first major arrest of protesters. Since then, more than 3,100 people have been arrested or detained on campuses across the country. Most have been charged with trespassing or disturbing the peace. Some have faced more serious charges, including resisting arrest.

But in the months since, many charges have been dropped, though some students face additional consequences, including being barred from their campuses or having their diplomas confiscated.

Travis County District Attorney Delia Garza, who dropped trespassing charges against more than 100 people arrested at the University of Texas at Austin, said such charges are rarely a priority for prosecutors because they are minor, nonviolent offenses. Garza, a Democrat, also said she calculated that jurors in her community would likely determine that students protesting on their own campus were simply exercising their First Amendment rights.

At some universities, the decision to drop the charges was met with disappointment. “Actions that violate laws and institutional rules must be punished,” said Mike Rosen, a spokesman for the University of Texas at Austin.

Many charges have also been dropped among the thousands of people arrested during the 2020 racial justice protests, with some prosecutors saying they would focus only on defendants caught destroying property or looting, not those simply protesting.

“The goal is not to punish people,” said Hermann Walz, a defense attorney and former prosecutor who teaches criminal law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. “It’s about cleaning up the streets.”

According to data collected by The New York Times, protesters have been arrested 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 fewer than 4,000.

Historians who study student movements say the United States has not seen this many people arrested during campus protests in 50 years. While millions of students participated in anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, about 4,000 people were arrested during campus protests in the spring of 1969, the peak of the year.

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 protests in Vietnam.”

Here’s a closer look at three schools where arrests have been high.

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 had seen encampments at other schools and decided to protest in solidarity.

“This war is an American war,” Greene said, citing U.S. military and financial support for Israel. “So we have a responsibility as Americans and as members of American institutions to fight back.”

After Greene and other students erected tents in Dunn Meadow, a campus green space that had been designated as a public free-speech space in 1969, 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 dropped the charges, calling the arrests “constitutionally dubious.” (One person was charged with assault and battery for biting a police officer.)

The university had also issued campus bans to those arrested, but eventually lifted those bans for all but a handful of protesters, including Greene. He had faced a five-year campus ban, but the Indiana University Police Department lifted that ban after Greene appealed.

University of Texas at Austin, 136 arrests

The University of Texas at Austin was one of the first universities in a Republican-controlled Southern state where police arrested protesters. There, university officials informed protest organizers that their demonstration “may not go as planned.”

When students gathered anyway on April 24, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state police onto the campus, and baton-wielding officers arrested dozens of people. They were all charged with trespassing.

Local prosecutors dropped all trespassing charges, citing problems with the evidence. Some of those arrested that day face campus disciplinary measures, including confiscation of their transcripts and diplomas.

Five days later, 80 more people were arrested after students set up tents. Benjamin Kern, a final-year hydrology and water resources student, said he joined the encampment knowing he would likely go to jail for doing so, but he thought the charges would be dropped. He said he wanted to show his support for the Palestinian people and his opposition to his university’s investments in weapons manufacturers.

“I believe that as a student I have the right to go to my university and ask for changes,” he said.

On June 26, Garza, the Travis County district attorney, announced that she had decided to drop all trespassing charges against those arrested on April 29, including Kern.

Garza said the body camera footage she saw showed a chaotic scene, with officers in riot gear shoving students as an order to disperse could be heard in the background. She added that it would be “incredibly difficult” to prove that those arrested heard the order and refused to comply.

Kern and others arrested at the University of Texas remain subject to campus disciplinary proceedings and could face sanctions ranging from a written warning to expulsion.

University of Virginia, 27 arrests

On April 30, the largest number of people arrested in a single day was about 400 across nine campuses. But protests continued even as many campuses prepared for final exams and graduations. In early May, 130 arrests were made at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and 33 at the University of Pennsylvania.

On May 4, as students prepared for final exams at the University of Virginia, administrators called in police to break up an encampment. Officers in riot gear used chemical irritants to disperse the protesters and eventually arrested 27 people.

The local prosecutor dropped charges against seven people, saying there was insufficient evidence. He offered the others a deal: The charges would be dropped in August if they had no criminal charges pending at that time.

Eleven students were disciplined at the university. Four of them were seniors whose degrees were denied, including Cady de la Cruz, 22, who recently completed her bachelor’s degree in anthropology. She said she joined the encampment to protest what she sees 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 be hearing about the status of her degree and feared the process could drag on into the fall.

De la Cruz said she wasn’t sure what that might mean for her job search. “I can’t easily leave college,” she said. “There’s a barrier that’s holding me back.”

A spokesperson said the university did not comment on student disciplinary proceedings.

The arrests and the start of summer break haven’t completely calmed the protests. At Indiana University, students are still sleeping in tents at Dunn Meadow. Greene, the doctoral student, said that before his campus ban was lifted, he would go to the encampment every day but never leave the sidewalk, which is city property.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.