The Brown Police Department has charged 41 students with trespassing after they refused to leave the university's administration building after hours on Monday, according to officials at the Ivy League school in Providence, Rhode Island.
Hours earlier, protesters met with Brown President Christina H. Paxson and demanded that the university “withdraw its donation to the Israeli military occupation,” the school said in a statement about the arrests. The students were photographed and fingerprinted in the administration building and released later Monday evening. Other students waited outside to cheer them on.
It was the second wave of arrests at Brown in just over a month, as university leaders across the country try to balance students' right to protest with the need to maintain order.
Twenty students protesting the Israeli invasion of Gaza were arrested on trespassing charges on November 8, although Brown dropped the charges on November 27, two days after a Palestinian Brown University student, Hisham Awartani, and two others Palestinian students were shot dead in Burlington, Vermont.
Brown said Wednesday that while protests are “a necessary and acceptable means of expression on campus,” students cannot “disrupt normal university operations.” Location and type of protests.
“Disturbing secure buildings is unacceptable, and the university stands ready to increase criminal charges for future incidents involving students occupying secure buildings,” Brown said.
In Haverford, outside Philadelphia, student activists began a sit-in on Dec. 6 and occupied Founders Hall, which houses administrative offices. They are demanding that university President Wendy Raymond publicly call for a ceasefire in Gaza, which Israel invaded following an Oct. 7 attack by Hamas militants.
Hundreds of students took part last week, bringing food and setting up study spaces. According to the students who organized the protest, teachers even showed up to teach the class.
Noting that the protesters were impeding the activities of fellow students, staff and faculty, the university told organizers of the sit-in on Tuesday that they must “end actions that impede student learning and university operations,” including the sit-in in of Founders Hall,” Raymond and the university's dean said in a message to campus Wednesday morning.
The students responsible for organizing told the Associated Press that university officials threatened to take the protesters before a disciplinary board if they did not leave the building. About 50 students defied the warning and spent the night in the building. On Wednesday morning, protesters held one final rally, delivered letters to Raymond and dispersed.
SPRING: Associated Press