As pro-Palestinian demonstrations rocked college campuses this spring with protests of the war in Gaza, university administrators were 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. Most were charged with trespassing or disturbing the peace. Some face more serious charges, like resisting arrest. 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, reports the New York Times. Delia Garza, the prosecutor who dropped criminal trespassing charges against more than 100 people arrested at the University of Texas at Austin, said such charges were rarely a priority for prosecutors, being minor and nonviolent offenses. Garza said jurors in her community would likely find that students protesting on their campus were 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,” said Mike Rosen of the University of Texas at Austin. Many charges were also dropped among the thousands of people 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 who teaches criminal law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “It’s to clear the streets.” Protesters were detained this year at more than 70 schools in at least 30 states, from Arizona State University, with80,000 students, to the University of Mary Washington in Virginia, with a student body of under 4,000.