AMHERST, Mass. (news agencies) — Since her arrest at a 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.
It has kept the graduate student from work toward finishing her dissertation in economics.
“It’s been a really rough few months for me since my arrest,” McGrew said. “I never imagined this is how UMass (administration) would respond.”
Some 3,200 people were arrested this spring during a wave of pro-Palestinian tent encampments protesting the war in Gaza. 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.
Many students have already seen those charges dismissed. 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 media and partner newsrooms.
Along with the legal limbo, those students face uncertainty in their academic careers. Some remain steadfast, saying they would have made the same decisions to protest even if they had known the consequences. Others have struggled with the aftermath of the arrests, harboring doubts about whether to stay enrolled in college at all.
In St. Louis, Valencia Alvarez is waiting to hear what will come of the potential charges she and 99 others could face for a protest April 27 that lasted less than half a day at Washington University.
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.
The demonstrations swept public and private universities, on campuses large and small, urban and rural. 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 — decisions that have had lasting reverberations.
Some college leaders said calling police was the only option to end protests that stood in the way of commencement ceremonies, disrupted campus life and included instances of antisemitic signs and language.
Student groups and some faculty members have blasted college leaders for inviting police inside their gates. In their view, the police actions often trampled peaceful demonstrations with unnecessary levels of force.
The vast majority of the cases against the demonstrators — ranging from students and faculty to people without any ties to the colleges — 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.
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 news agencies’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,” said Maddison Tirado, a student whose trespassing charge has been dismissed. Tirado said protesters were treated as if authorities saw them “like little terrorists running around.”
One student demonstrator, 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.
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