(Headline USA) Since her arrest at a pro-Hamas protest at the University of Massachusetts, Annie McGrew has been pivoting between two sets of hearings: one for the misdemeanor charges she faces in court, and another for violations of the college’s conduct code.
The decision for which she now bears the consequences has kept the graduate student from working toward finishing her dissertation in economics and given her an abrupt introduction to the real world, beyond the “safe spaces” typically afforded to hive-minded radicals on the Amherst campus.
“It’s been a really rough few months for me since my arrest,” McGrew groused. “I never imagined this is how UMass [administration] would respond.”
Nationwide, some 3,200 people were arrested this spring during a wave of pro-Hamas campus takeovers. The riots, many of which had anti-Semitic undertones, swept public and private universities, on campuses large and small, urban and rural.
While some colleges ended demonstrations by striking deals with the students, or simply waited them out, others called in police when protesters refused to leave.
At the UMass campus, the law enforcement response, including 117 police vehicles on campus, unsettled protesters. McGrew remembers seeing police with riot gear rushing the crowd of students. A total of 134 people were arrested.
As arrestees were processed at the university’s sports arena, graduate student Charles Sullivan, who is transgender, whined about feeling humiliated by campus police.
Sullivan claimed an officer demanded that students describe their genitalia to gain access to a restroom.
Sullivan has since decided to leave the university, in part because of the arrest. Wrapping up a master’s degree in anthropology, Sullivan will move to Ohio in the fall to pursue a Ph.D., instead of continuing at UMass.
“I think mostly I’m just kind of ready to get out of this place,” Sullivan complained.
UMass Chancellor Javier Reyes said he ordered the sweep after discussions broke down with protesters.
“Let me be clear—involving law enforcement is the absolute last resort,” Reyes wrote to the campus community.
However, many campus organizations have since rebuked Reyes for deploying police, including the UMass faculty senate, which passed a vote of no confidence against the chancellor.
In June, Reyes announced a task force to review campus policies on demonstrations, including the land-use policy many arrestees were charged with violating.
The group is just getting started with their work, said Anthony Paik, a member of the faculty senate and co-chair of the task force. It would have more information by the end of August, he said, just before the start of the new school year.
BRACING FOR MORE
As students return this fall, colleges are bracing for more protests against both Israel’s military and Hamas, and strategizing over tactics including when to call in law enforcement.
Some college leaders, such as Reyes, said calling police was the only option to end protests that stood in the way of commencement ceremonies, disrupted campus life and interfered with the rights of other students—Jewish ones in particular—to engage in learning without fear or intimidation.
The vast majority of the cases involve misdemeanors or lower-level charges. Examples include trespassing, failure to disperse, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.
More serious charges were filed against demonstrators who occupied a campus building at Columbia University, where some were arrested initially on felony trespassing charges.
Those were lowered to misdemeanors, and dozens of students have had their charges dropped. In a decision criticized by Jewish groups, prosecutors said there was a lack of evidence tying them to acts of property damage, and none of the students had criminal histories.
But the cases have yet to be resolved for hundreds of people at campuses that saw the highest number of arrests, according to an analysis of data gathered by the Associated Press and partner newsrooms.
And for other students, the impact on their academic careers has affected them more than any legal jeopardy.
DENIED A DEGREE
At Washington University in St. Louis, conduct hearings for arrested students began recently but have yet to result in disciplinary decisions.
In the meantime, Valencia Alvarez griped that she does not have the master’s degree in public health she would have received by now if not for her arrest.
Alvarez, who hopes to branch into social justice and community organizing, said she doesn’t have regrets. But that’s not to say the protest didn’t come at a cost.
“I want that degree,” Alvarez said. “I worked four jobs throughout my two years at Wash U to be able to afford tuition without pulling out any loans.”
Alvarez is waiting to hear what will come of the potential charges she and 99 others could face for a protest April 27.
Twenty-three of those arrested were students. In June, the university gave them two options: They could face a hearing with the Office of Student Conduct, or they could “accept responsibility” and forgo further investigation. Alvarez took the first option.
“I don’t really plan on being quiet about this, and I think that’s the goal of the second option,” Alvarez said.
CONCUSSION REPERCUSSIONS
At Emerson College in Boston, 118 people were arrested when police were asked to enforce a city ordinance against camping on public property.
All were charged with disturbing the peace and granted “pre-arraignment diversion,” which means no charges will be filed in exchange for 40 hours of community service, prosecutors said.
Owen Buxton, an Emerson student, complained that he suffered a concussion when police shoved him into a bronze statue. It was his second arrest of the semester for protesting the war in Gaza.
The experience made it hard for him to concentrate or participate in classes.
“It stifled all my creativity—I didn’t make anything for months, which is not typical of me,” whined Buxton, a filmmaker.
Emerson allowed students to take the semester pass–fail following an outcry over the arrests.
A spokesperson for the Boston Police Department said there were no injuries during the Emerson arrests.
TREATED LIKE ‘LITTLE TERRORISTS’
Prosecutors in several cities are still evaluating whether to pursue charges. But in many cases, officials have indicated they do not intend to pursue low-level violations, according to AP’s review of data on campuses with at least 100 arrests.
In upstate New York, the Ulster County district attorney asked judges to dismiss 129 cases stemming from arrests at the State University of New York at New Paltz.
“I have concluded that it is best to dismiss these charges now and relieve all concerned and the courts of any further burdens, expenses, and expenditures of scarce public and judicial resources,” District Attorney Emmanuel Nneji wrote in June.
New Paltz students said they were sitting with their arms interlocked when officers hauled them away on May 2.
“It was handled very brutally,” complained Maddison Tirado, a student whose trespassing charge has been dismissed.
Tirado said the pro-Hamas rioters were treated as if authorities saw them “like little terrorists running around.”
One participant, Ezra Baptist, said he was taken to a hospital with a concussion and a cut after being thrown forward and hitting his head during his arrest by state troopers. He was supposed to avoid looking at screens because of his injury and could not complete one class he needed to graduate in May.
The county sheriff’s office, however, said officers showed restraint and that a trooper was injured when demonstrators threw bottles.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
