Fourteen of the over 3,100 pro-Palestinian college protestors who were arrested last spring were found not guilty of misdemeanor charges on Sept. 20 regarding their encampment on Tulane University’s property. 

State District Judge Ben Willard of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court acquitted the protestors of “remaining in places after being forbidden” on the same day the trial began. 

The 14 protestors were arrested in the early hours of May 1 when members of the Tulane University Police Department, New Orleans Police Department and Louisiana State Police Department cleared the pro-Palestinian encampment in front of Gibson Hall. The encampment began on the afternoon of April 29. 

The 14 defendants consisted of Tulane students, Loyola University students and local non-students.   

The trial is one of the first in the country to prosecute student protestors for the wave of pro-Palestinian campus encampments that occurred last spring.   

At 2 p.m. on April 30, the second day of the encampment, Tulane displayed a large screen facing the encampment that read, “Private Property – No Trespassing, Everyone must leave this area, immediately. Entry and continued presence are strictly prohibited. Violators will be prosecuted.”  

Senior Rory MacDonald and alumna Vonne Crandell were among the 14 arrested and prosecuted protestors.  

MacDonald said they didn’t go into the protest with the intention of getting arrested, but thought, “I can do this if it means going to jail, because I know that I’m doing the right thing.”                                                                                                                     

Protestors face legal and institutional consequences across the country 

Arrested protestors from other universities experienced a wide array of consequences.  

“It does set a precedent for how future protests will be handled, or how organizations or individuals might approach certain protests in the future,” Andrew Leber, a professor of political science, said. 

At Columbia University, prosecutors dropped arrested protestors’ charges in June. Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Stephen Millan said that due to protestors covering surveillance cameras and wearing masks, there was insufficient evidence to charge them with trespassing. The Columbia encampment received heavy media attention during the two-week period that it remained on campus until police cleared it. 

Charges were also dropped against protestors from the University of Texas, Austin.   

Five protestors from City University of New York took plea deals and eight await a December trial on multiple felony charges.  

Beyond legal consequences, protestors face conduct violations at their universities, which include suspensions and, in some cases, expulsion.  

MacDonald is currently suspended and awaiting a final hearing regarding their status as a student.  

MacDonald is wary of commenting on the specifics of their suspension due to the ongoing conduct violation process, but said, “the way that I engage in student life is being pretty heavily restricted by the university.”  

Crandell was not surprised by the consequences he faced after the encampment. As an RA, he said he lost housing that he was supposed to have for three more weeks, as well as his job. “I wasn’t shocked that Tulane University would do that,” he said.  

“Federal law prohibits Tulane from discussing student educational records, including any disciplinary action,” Mike Strecker, assistant vice president for news and media relations, said in a statement. “We fundamentally respect the right to protest. However, we do not tolerate behavior that violates university conduct policies.”                                                                                          

Pro-Palestinian activists continued to fight charges 

“We’ve been waging a political defense campaign all summer,” MacDonald said. As soon as they were arrested, Tulane Students for a Democratic Society, an organization associated with the encampment that is now unaffiliated with Tulane, posted on Instagram calling for what MacDonald called a “phone zap.” 

MacDonald said phone zaps are a tactic used by Tulane SDS and the national SDS involving having many people call an office or person to make a demand.  

“Call/email to demand the immediate release of the Tulane 7,” the May 2 post stated. It named  Tulane students including Rory MacDonald and Vonne Crandell, two of the 14 acquitted protestors.  

Since May 2, Tulane SDS has posted ten phone zap campaigns to drop the legal and conduct violation charges against the protestors. They also have posted dozens of protest dates to encourage their followers to support the arrested protestors or protest specific institutions and people, such as the rally on Aug. 13 when President Joe Biden visited Tulane’s campus.                   

Rallies continued on the day of the trial  

Around 8 a.m. on the day of the trial, around 40 protestors gathered in front of the steps of the Orleans Criminal District Court to support the 14 defendants.  

“Tulane, Tulane you can’t hide, you’re supporting genocide,” and “Let’s go NOSHIP, Israel eat s—,” were chants used at the protest.  

Members of the rally donned keffiyehs, a traditional Arab headdress that has become a pro-Palestinian symbol. 

The protestors moved inside for the trial at 11 a.m. and filled seats in Williard’s courtroom.  

“Protesting is not a crime!” Tulane SDS’ Instagram post stated. The post called for supporters to “rally and pack the courts for encampment defenders.”   

Crandell believes the phone zaps, rallies and other parts of the “defense campaign” led to the acquittal.  

The trial begins, ends 

In the opening statements of the trial, defense lawyers argued that protestors were arrested on public sidewalks and medians, rather than Tulane’s Gibson lawn.  

“It was clear that, at least per the letter of the law, they were all on public property,” Leber, who attended the public trial, said.  

Emily Ratner, a civil rights and criminal defense attorney and graduate of Tulane, represented four of the 14 defendants. 

“Not a scrap of evidence established that any of these fourteen defendants trespassed on Tulane’s property or committed any other crime,” Ratner said. 

Over a dozen witnesses, all of which were law enforcement officers, were cross-examined about the arrests.  

According to Ratner, TUPD determined what evidence would be uploaded to the police system and given to the state.  

“When Tulane authorizes itself to make those determinations […] the defendant’s constitutional rights are violated, and then the public’s constitutional right to an open trial based on evidence is violated,” Ratner said.   

Defense attorneys claimed that TUPD officers failed to recover surveillance footage of the encampment, resulting in improperly destroyed evidence.  

“There was no evidence introduced of people on the lawn. So there would be testimony that these individuals had been trespassing, but there was no video evidence introduced to that effect?” Leber said. 

At least one officer reported that before the arrests, he wrote a gist sheet, a document that details the probable cause and offense of the person charged. 

“When you have such a depersonalized, unspecific gist that you’ve drafted before anything has even happened, you run the risk of not describing accurately what’s going to happen,” Ratner said. 

The trial, some say, could be a symptom of a larger problem.  

“This conflict has proven a flash point for town-gown relations,” Leber said, referring to Tulane’s divergent relationship between the university community and the greater New Orleans community. “I assume, they [Tulane] knew that the case was that weak. I was expecting, clearly, some to be found not guilty,” Leber said. 

“Why did the district attorney’s office waste city resources prosecuting a case without enough evidence to get convictions?” Ratner said.  

Pro-Israel students react 

Pro-Israel counter-protestors remained on the other side of St. Charles Avenue throughout the encampment. They held Israeli flags and sometimes interacted with the encampment protestors, but typically remained a small and quiet group.  

Senior Bali Lavine was among them, often posting the encampment on social media. 

“I felt an obligation that if our school is not going to use the reporting system and have admin find everybody responsible, then ultimately it falls within the responsibility of the students, because somebody needs to ensure that everybody is safe on campus,” Lavine said. 

Lavine is president of Students Supporting Israel, a Tulane chapter of a national club.  

SSI has hosted many events on campus, ranging from vigils to demonstrations. “We take pride in working with administration, whether it is proactively ensuring that the university brings out barricades, et cetera, anything that will protect all students, not just Jewish students, not just Zionist students, anybody,” Lavine said.   

“Our only hope is that, with time, that they will start working with the university and hopefully that will enable more dialogue to open up on campus,” she said, referring to Tulane SDS. 

Lavine was offended by pro-Palestinian demonstrators’ chants at the courthouse on Friday, namely, “Israel eat s—.” Lavine called it “childish behavior.” 

Now what? 

On June 17, Gov. Jeff Landry enacted a law excluding civil disobedience from free speech protections on college campuses.   

“I don’t doubt that there will be efforts to try and criminalize certain forms of protest or speech through legislation in the future,” Leber said. 

Thousands of students arrested in pro-Palestinian protests last spring are still awaiting trial.  

“Let this case be a warning to prosecutors everywhere who believe that judges and juries will overlook the facts and the evidence so that they can convict a bunch of nonviolent protesters who have already been subjected to extreme violence and threats of violence by the state,” Ratner said.