Tag: Swarthmore

Nine protesters who were charged with trespassing for refusing to leave a pro-Palestinian encampment at Swarthmore College last year have entered no-contest pleas to summary noise violation offenses, ending a contentious legal case that had spanned more than a year.

The so-called Swarthmore 9 entered the pleas late Monday, the day before their trial was expected to begin before Delaware County Court Judge Dominic Pileggi.

As part of the plea negotiation, all nine agreed to perform eight hours of community service and pay court costs.

The group had been charged with misdemeanor trespassing, and had refused to accept an earlier, similar plea offer made by District Attorney Tanner Rouse that would have had the same outcome. Doing so, they said at the time, could chill future student protests.

In a statement Tuesday, members of the group said the decision to take the plea deal was “an incredibly difficult and far from unanimous decision.” They said they felt they had “no good options” and accepted the deal to avoid probation or jail time.

“We are deeply grateful for the outpouring of support in solidarity with our case,” the statement said. “The community’s work in pressuring the DA and condemning Swarthmore’s repression and complicity only strengthens our upcoming fight for divestment and an end to the genocide.”

Rouse, for his part, said the case came to a close in “the same way that every other defiant trespass case that we have handled during my time in the office has concluded.”

“This offer had been on the table since the morning of their arrest, and in fact the case would have been withdrawn entirely, as they requested and as other protesters have had their cases withdrawn, if they had performed the same community service before formal arraignment,” he said in a statement Tuesday.

The group was arrested and briefly detained outside the college’s Trotter Hall in May 2025 when officers from surrounding police departments dismantled their encampment protesting the war in Gaza and Swarthmore’s IT contract with Cisco, a company that does business with the Israeli government.

Of the nine people arrested, only one, Jace Boland, is a student at the college. Another, Brendan Cook, is a former student who was suspended for participating in an earlier protest in 2024.

The others — Jonathan Britt, Mara Helen Cahill, Daria C. Dressler, Thomas Falcone, Colin Buckley Malcarney, Riley J. McManus, and Andrew Thomas — are not affiliated with Swarthmore.

Last week, Pileggi denied a motion to dismiss the charges against them, ruling that prosecutors had presented sufficient evidence for the case to proceed to trial.

Swarthmore issued multiple orders to protesters last spring to leave the campus, citing concerns over vandalism and public safety. Many of the protesters wore masks, refused to identify themselves, and were not affiliated with the school, according to administrators at the college.

Prosecutors noted that other protesters at the encampment avoided arrest by following an order to leave the area and were allowed to continue chanting and holding protest signs elsewhere on the campus.

A Delaware County judge on Monday denied a motion to dismiss criminal charges filed against nine people for refusing to leave a pro-Palestinian encampment on Swarthmore College’s campus last spring, setting the stage for a trial next week.

Judge Dominic Pileggi ruled that prosecutors had presented sufficient evidence for the case to proceed to trial and allow a jury to decide whether the so-called Swarthmore 9 had trespassed.

The group was arrested and briefly detained outside the college’s Trotter Hall in May 2025 when officers from surrounding police departments dismantled their encampment protesting the war in Gaza and Swarthmore’s IT contract with Cisco, a company that does business with the Israeli government.

Of the nine people arrested, only one, Jace Boland, is a student at the college. Another, Brendan Cook, is a former student who was suspended for participating in an earlier protest in 2024, but the rest are not affiliated with Swarthmore, according to school officials.

Members of the group — Boland, Cook, Jonathan Britt, Mara Helen Cahill, Daria C. Dressler, Thomas Falcone, Colin Buckley Malcarney, Riley J. McManus, and Andrew Thomas — have all been charged with trespassing, a third-degree misdemeanor.

District Attorney Tanner Rouse has said his office offered each member of the group a plea deal that would see those charges reduced to summary offenses, similar to traffic citations, that could be resolved by paying a fine.

The group has refused, saying pleading guilty would set a precedent on how colleges across the country could curtail students’ protest rights.

During Monday’s hearing, the group’s attorney, Marni Jo Snyder, argued that Swarthmore and county prosecutors violated the protestors’ constitutional rights by arresting them.

She noted that Swarthmore changed its policy allowing protests on its campus to explicitly outlaw encampments after a similar, monthlong demonstration in the same location in 2024.

Policing a specific type of expressive speech, she said, is illegal.

“The policy is wrong, the repeated orders to leave are wrong,” she said. “These are improper responses to constitutionally protected speech.”

Snyder said that, though Swarthmore’s campus is private property, administrators have allowed previous demonstrations to be held there, as well as other quasi-private events. The arrests in this case, she said, showed that prosecutors were specifically targeting demonstrators protesting the war in Gaza.

Samantha Door, who represented the district attorney’s office at the hearing, disputed that, saying the protestors’ conduct, and not the purpose of the encampment, was the reason criminal charges were filed.

Swarthmore issued multiple warnings to the group to disperse over the course of three days, Door said, including one final warning 10 minutes before the encampment was dismantled.

Other protestors who left the encampment and continued to chant and hold protest signs were not arrested, she said.

Also, Door said administrators raised concerns about public safety, since many of the protestors wore masks and refused to identify themselves, vandalized campus property with graffiti, and used pallets and other materials to create barricades around the encampment.

The trial in the case is scheduled to begin with jury selection on June 30.

Nine protesters arrested last year at a pro-Palestinian encampment at Swarthmore College said Tuesday that they had done nothing wrong and have no intention of pleading guilty to the trespassing charges they face.

“We affirm that we are guilty of nothing because it is always right to rebel against genocide,” Jace Boland, a junior at the college, said at a news conference on the steps of the Delaware County Courthouse.

Boland was joined by his eight codefendants and a small crowd of supporters in urging prosecutors to drop what they described as “absurd criminal charges.”

The so-called Swarthmore 9 were arrested and briefly detained on the college’s campus in May 2025 when officers from surrounding police departments dismantled their encampment protesting the war in Gaza and Swarthmore’s contract with a company that does business with the Israeli government.

Of the nine people arrested, only Boland is a student at the college. Another, Brendan Cook, is a former student who was suspended for participating in an earlier protest in 2024, but the rest are not affiliated with Swarthmore, according to school officials.

Members of the group — Boland, Cook, Jonathan Britt, Mara Helen Cahill, Daria C. Dressler, Thomas Falcone, Colin Buckley Malcarney, Riley J. McManus, and Andrew Thomas — have all been charged with trespassing, a third-degree misdemeanor.

Their attorney, Marni Jo Snyder, has filed a motion to dismiss the case that will be argued before Delaware County Court Judge Dominic Pileggi on June 22, a week before the group’s scheduled trial.

District Attorney Tanner Rouse said Tuesday that prosecutors had offered the group the chance to plead to a lesser, summary offense, which Rouse described as “akin to an ‘open container’ or noise violation ticket.”

“That they want to proceed to trial as charged is absolutely their right, but so is it the commonwealth’s right to protect the interests of private citizens and institutions that do not have to abide every random person who has an issue parking on their front lawn,” Rouse said. “Private property owners have a right to say ‘please leave’ when the time comes.

“If their concern is a criminal charge or exposure to judicial punishment, there is and always has been an easy off-ramp available to them,” he added. “They have chosen not to take it.”

At Tuesday’s news conference, Swarthmore professor Mark Wallace said he supports the protesters and believes the college betrayed the ideals on which it was founded by having them arrested.

“How can students who live and work on a campus be charged with trespassing there while applying what they’re learning in the real world?” he asked. “Colleges should be places where large, uncomfortable questions are asked and struggled over.”

A spokesperson for Swarthmore did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Previously, the college, in a statement, echoed what Rouse said Tuesday — that county prosecutors had offered to reduce the charges in the case to a summary offense if the defendants pleaded guilty, but they declined.

Boland said he and the others charged would not plead guilty, fearful that doing so would discourage future activism.

“If the college can deploy state violence to protect its interests without consequence, there is no telling what levels of repression future generations of student activists will face,” Boland said. “Swarthmore College cannot continue to benefit from its reputation as a liberal arts institution that encourages activism while simultaneously crushing dissent.”

Swarthmore Borough police arrested the group in May 2025 after issuing multiple warnings to members of an encampment that had formed outside Swarthmore’s Trotter Hall.

The encampment, which protesters referred to as the Hossam Shabat Liberation Zone in honor of a journalist killed in an Israeli drone strike, was formed to demanded that Swarthmore end its IT support contract with Cisco, which also holds contracts with the Israeli government.

Swarthmore College president Valerie Smith wrote in a letter last year that members of the Liberation Zone created their enclosure using campus property and had vandalized other parts of campus with incendiary graffiti.

Smith wrote that she “unequivocally condemn[ed]” the group’s actions and said that law enforcement officials, including the FBI, told her to dismantle the encampment as soon as possible.

“I urge these protesters to pursue a less divisive approach to expressing their views — one that aligns with not just the College’s policies, but with the mutual respect, compassion, and care that all in our community deserve,” Smith wrote in the letter.

Days before the protesters were arrested, campus police forcibly took back some of the items they had taken to build the encampment, and issued disbandment orders to people they found within it.

On the day police came to clear out the encampment, they gave protesters a 10-minute warning to vacate the property.

The protesters refused to leave, sitting with their arms interlocked, according to video of the arrests posted by the Swarthmore chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.

All nine of the protesters charged in the case were detained briefly and released on unsecured bail.