BUZZ
School accused of using ‘carceral violence’ to squelch ‘students’ right to free expression and speech’
Nine pro-Palestinian Swarthmore College activists arrested last year for trespassing after they refused to vacate an encampment now want the local district attorney to drop all charges against them.
Swarthmore officials had “repeatedly warned” the so-called “Swarthmore 9” they had a May 3 (2025) 1 a.m. deadline to leave the premises or they’d face arrest. However, they decided to “sit down with their arms interlocked,” according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
The nine, only two of whom are affiliated with the college, were thus slapped with misdemeanor charges for that decision, and for refusing to identify themselves to personnel.
They also allegedly scrawled “abhorrent statements celebrating violence and promoting hate.”
This past Tuesday, the nine “joined a rally and press conference” prior to their first appearance in court to rip Swarthmore for “choosing ‘violence’ over their ‘community,’” WHYY reports.
Soon-to-be senior Jace Boland (pictured) said at the presser that “Swarthmore College claims that they had no choice but to arrest us, that their hand was forced because we constituted a threat to a community they were trying to protect, but we know the truth. [It] lashed out against us in defense not of their community, but of their investments.”
In mid-April, Boland wrote an op-ed for the student paper The Phoenix in which he claimed he was “dragged” from the encampment by cops, and then “thrown into” a police vehicle “under the vindictive stares” of several college administrators.
Boland complained of being bound in “excruciatingly tight” zip-ties, “struggling […] to afford rent” after being “banned from campus,” and “shocked” by Swarthmore’s “vindictiveness” (“they did not hesitate to subject me, a low-income Black student, to both the most severe disciplinary sanctions ever imposed for student activism”).
Swarthmore Assistant Director of Media Relations Cara Anderson said the difference between the 2024 and 2025 pro-Palestinian encampments is that a majority of the latter’s was not comprised of Swarthmore students, and the school had “received an influx of complaints from other students, their families, and faculty and staff” concerned about “their own safety and security.”
Another of the “Swarthmore 9,” recent graduate Brendan Cook, had been suspended for his participation in the 2024 encampment, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
In a separate statement made Monday, Cook said Swarthmore “was using ‘carceral violence to punish activists and eliminating students’ First Amendment right to free expression and speech.’” He asked why the local district attorney was “pursuing criminal charges against ‘anti-war activists.’”
At the Tuesday presser, Boland added “If we lose, Swarthmore becomes an environment in which police violence against protestors is the norm.
“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.”
MORE: Swarthmore College cleaning up ‘hundreds’ of anti-Israel vandalism messages
