Students, faculty arrested at Virginia Tech now face possibility of university discipline

Emon Green was one of 82 people arrested and charged with trespassing on Sunday night at a pro-Palestinian encampment as it was being broken up by Virginia Tech campus police. But dealing with the aftermath with the university could be worse than facing his misdemeanor charge.

“I’m more concerned about what the school is going to do, than what the law is going to do,” Green said Wednesday while visiting the protest that had once again formed outside the student center, across the sidewalk from the Graduate Life Center where the encampment had convened for three days.

The encampment was set up on the state university’s Blacksburg campus early Friday morning to protest Israeli military action in Gaza, to urge the university to divest from Israeli investments, and to request a meeting with Virginia Tech President Tim Sands.

Fifty-three of those arrested late Sunday and into Monday were students. All have been released, with court hearings scheduled for various dates through July.

Virginia Tech requires students who have been arrested to report it to the Office of Student Conduct within 10 business days.

Green, a fourth-year student studying philosophy, politics and economics, planned to do so later on Wednesday. But he had already heard from fellow students who had reported their arrests that they had been called to have a hearing with the student conduct office.

Consequences of a conduct hearing can range from a formal warning to a probationary period to suspension or dismissal from campus.

Virginia Tech spokesperson Michael Stowe wouldn’t comment on what consequences, if any, arrested students or faculty would face from the university, saying only that per university policy, “an arrest is automatically referred to Student Conduct.”

Stowe referred a question specifically about consequences for faculty members to the faculty handbook. That handbook explains that a faculty member could be dismissed for cause for a criminal conviction for conduct relating to job performance. But it does not specify a penalty for participating in demonstrations, protests or political activity beyond campaigns for office.

Nine students arrested at a protest at the University of Mary Washington over the weekend will not face charges, the school’s president said during a meeting with students on April 30. President Troy Paino said that he had spoken with Sands, and had also received information from the state attorney general’s office that contributed to the decision to take down the encampment, according to a report by the Fredricksburg Free Press .

In an open letter sent to Sands on Wednesday evening, faculty members called for the university to dismiss the charges against students, faculty and staff, and for no disciplinary action to be taken against those arrested.

“Students only encamped when the VT administration curtailed pathways for pursuing meaningful dialogue over the humanitarian emergency caused by Israeli military aggression,” the letter explained. “Whether or not we agree with their demands in full, as faculty, we admire and applaud how our students were able to transform collective grief into an organized call for structural and institutional change in university, state, and national policy by creating a dynamic space of mutual learning, support, inclusion and community building.“

The letter said that forcefully shutting down the encampment and sending out a series of university emergency alert messages is what created a dangerous situation on campus — not the demonstration itself. As of 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, 138 faculty members had signed onto the letter.

Virginia Tech has more than 5,500 faculty members across various classifications.

Faatina Hameed, one of the first students arrested Sunday night, took issue with a letter released by Sands on Monday, in which he wrote that he was “deeply disappointed to see members of our community choose uncivil and unlawful behavior over purposeful engagement in difficult conversations and robust debate that should be part of the Virginia Tech experience.”

She said students had exhausted avenues for meaningful discussion with university administrators throughout the academic year. It took a month to schedule a meeting that Sands had in November with Students for Peace and Justice in Palestine, the Muslim Student Association, the Middle Eastern and North African Student Association, and Hillel at Virginia Tech, Hameed said.

Sands hasn’t spoken with those groups since, Hameed said, even as student demands have evolved since initial calls for the university to acknowledge the violence against Palestinians in Gaza.

“Students who have family who they’ve lost, who have been grieving the entire year,” Hameed said. “It came off very condescending to demand that grieving students be more civil than we’ve been.”

Hameed will graduate next week with an undergraduate degree in industrial systems engineering. She wore her cap and gown while being put into flex-cuffs on Sunday night — not to make a statement, she said, but rather because she had been preparing to take graduation photos when police started saying Sunday afternoon that the encampment needed to be taken down. She rushed to the encampment with her regalia thrown over a white dress.

She said that even if a ceasefire is reached in Gaza, the group’s demands for boycott, divestment and sanctions will remain. She hopes students remaining on campus will continue to advocate for Palestine.

Green said that for students feeling angry about what happened Sunday, “it’s about translating that into a sense of principled frustration, principled dissent, principled advocacy.” If people continue to learn and engage with the cause over the summer, “when we come back, ideally, we come back stronger than we were.”

Green rushed to his next class, but Hameed stuck around at the protest on Wednesday afternoon. Someone suggested that the group move from the shade into the full sun on the graduate center lawn. Several people made their way across the sidewalk, bringing blankets, snacks and two large Palestinian flags, propped up in a laundry basket used as a makeshift flag stand. As they settled into the grass to talk or study, no one stopped them.

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