On Monday, June 10, and Tuesday, June 11, Fredericksburg Commonwealth’s Attorney Elizabeth K. Humphries dropped charges against the nine students arrested and charged with trespassing during an anti-Israel campus protest on April 27. Humphries opted to prosecute three more individuals arrested on that date who were not students. Each was sentenced to 20 hours of community service.
The protestors ignored commands to leave the area after officers declared an unlawful assembly, also known as a riot. The University of Mary Washington has stonewalled this news organization in its many attempts to learn the identities of those charged. Humphries failed to include the identities in a lengthy four-page statement about her decision.
Meanwhile, Humphries noted the riots at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, where a woman was struck and killed by a car, in her statement about the protests at Mary Washington, calling the former examples of dangerous demonstrations.
Humphries said she decided not to prosecute the students on June 10 and 11, 2024, opting to handle the matter through the university’s student conduct process. She adds that the decision was based on the students’ cooperation during the arrests and the peaceful resolution of the demonstration, which did not pose ongoing public safety risks.
You can read her complete statement below:
On April 27, 2024, nine enrolled students at the University of Mary Washington (UMW) were arrested for trespass on the campus under circumstances where the students participated in a tent encampment as part of a student group’s political demonstration event on Jefferson Square, a common area of the campus, and then refused to leave that area when UMW canceled the student event. On June 10 & June 11, 2024, the General District Court of the City of Fredericksburg granted my motion as the Fredericksburg Commonwealth’s Attorney to drop the charges against the nine students. (The charges were dismissed without prejudice and could be renewed if public safety required such renewal until April 27, 2025.)
Trespass on a common area of a public entity is best understood legally as a minor misdemeanor. Active jail time is not typically sought and may not even be possible. (Some trespass ordinances and statutes carry only a fine as a penalty.) For minor misdemeanors, my office and the University of Mary Washington Police Department routinely work together to divert UMW students to the student process and away from court prosecution unless we conclude court intervention is needed for public safety and/or victim interests. This understanding between the two local agencies has existed for many years.
The prosecution decline for the arrested students is consistent with this usual approach even though the arrests were an unfortunate necessity for the situation on April 27, 2024. With the conclusion of the students’ cases, I wish to address the necessity of the students’ arrest and the significant public safety risks that were involved.
On Saturday, April 27, 2024, a tent encampment on the UMW campus was put back in place by a demonstrating student group despite written instruction not to have the tents at the event given on April 26, 2024. On both April 26, 2024 and April 27, 2024, an unknown multitude of outsiders unaffiliated with UMW were invited to join the UMW encampment on social media. The invitation broadcast on April 27, 2024, included the suggestion that these individuals could bring their own tents to grow the encampment.
A tent encampment for a UMW student demonstration with the potential of any number of unknown non-UMW individuals joining with their own tents on a small university campus in a small city was a significant public safety risk. UMW administrators and law enforcement have the obligation to protect the entire campus at all times. When a demonstration is under way, this duty includes demonstrators, any counter demonstrators, students, staff, faculty, and members of the public who are present on campus whether for the demonstration or for other reasons.
However, individuals who are not students, faculty, or staff at UMW are not subject to any of UMW’s internal disciplinary rules, making it harder to ensure the safety of a demonstration for everyone as required. UMW administrators cannot know enough about the circumstances of such individuals who join a tent encampment, nor whether they will join in numbers too large to safely manage. In addition, because UMW is a public university, when freedom of speech is implicated, administrators’ approach to protecting the campus must still be rigorously neutral as to the content of the speech for all situations.
Unlike some other schools that have seen similar encampments, UMW does not have a written rule barring a tent encampment in any form in connection with a demonstration. But even without such a rule in place, the renewal of the tent encampment on April 27, 2024, along with the invitation on social media to grow the encampment to unknowable numbers (and tents) was still a significant public safety risk.
A tent encampment as a component of a demonstration raises the risks of abusive or harassing words, property damage, and actual violence. These risks have been borne out at some but not all universities with similar encampments in the Spring of 2024. Tent encampments are not protected constitutional speech. UMW administrators and law enforcement were never required to wait and see if something bad happened before acting on the tent encampment.
It is the risk of bad things developing from a rapid but foreseeable future change in conditions that provides the lens for evaluating the situation under way. The technique of just assuming, hoping, or wishing that all will remain well because the particular demonstration is peaceable at the moment does not work. Such an approach is not content-neutral. It requires assessment of what the state actor thinks about the individuals demonstrating, their speech, and/or their cause.
As a public university, UMW cannot permit a demonstration with tents to occur for one group even on a wait-and-see basis without being at risk of having to do the same for a future demon- strating group. As government actors, UMW administrators and law enforcement cannot prefer- ence any one group over another. The neutrality of the enforcement and prevention tools has to be maintained in order to ensure interventions are both effective to protect the entire community and constitutional. A prohibition on tents for any demonstration is content neutral.
The potential risk for incidents of violence, abusiveness, harassment, and property damage in connection with demonstrations has substantially increased over the past seven years. Community leaders are required to make decisions for public safety in this difficult context and to do so in a content-neutral manner.
In recent years, actual violence, property damage, and substantial civil strife have occurred in connection with large demonstration events. At times, these situations arose when the scale of the event was unregulated and unplanned for, or erupted in whole or part by surprise to the authorities. Such situations also may rapidly grow, or become enflamed, or both, especially as they are broadcast on social media.Examples of these situations include the following events: the Unite the Right Rally by white supremacists at the University of Virginia and in the City of Charlottesville on August 11-12, 2017; the storming and take-over of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2020, in Washington, DC, by supporters of the outgoing US president; and the civil strife, property damage, and violence that occurred across the country in June 2020, in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd by police officers on May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This list is not exhaustive, but it provides vivid examples of the difficulties involved. At least two of these examples involved death or substantial bodily injuries to individuals involved.
If any of these events had included an entrenched tent encampment, the possibilities for even more violence, damage, strife, and disruptiveness are easily foreseeable. This is why immediate intervention to ensure there was no tent encampment on the UMW campus was always necessary. The University of Mary Washington Police Department employs just thirteen officers for the protection of the entire UMW community. The City of Fredericksburg has a population of about 29,500. Local public safety resources to protect everyone are those of a small city.
Even though the arrests were necessary to accomplish removal of the tent encampment on April 27, 2024, I have concluded that the overall interests of justice and public safety mean that I should decline prosecution of the student cases. Law enforcement’s intervention on 4.27.2024 was a sufficient calibration to the circumstances. The arrest and immediate enforcement on 4.27.2024 clearly had good effects for public safety. Pushing forward at court with respect to the students would be a greater response than necessary when considering the good things that have occurred, specifically:
The students were peaceable and cooperative during the arrest.
After the arrests, the demonstrating student group suspended demonstrations for the remainder of the semester, which allowed the reading period, studying, and final exams to go forward without disruption. UMW’s core mission is education.
The group gave food that had been donated to the tent encampment to a local nonprofit.
The UMW community celebrated new graduates on May 11, 2024, in peaceful and festive commencement ceremonies.
UMW’s summer session has also started peacefully.
As the Fredericksburg Commonwealth’s Attorney, after extensive consultation with UMW Police Department Chief Michael Hall and UMW President Troy Paino, and in light of all circumstances outlined above, I have concluded that the interests of justice and public safety are better served if the students’ conduct on April 27, 2024, is addressed through the UMW student conduct process in lieu of criminal prosecution at court.
In addition to the nine students who were arrested, three adult individuals who were not enrolled students of the University of Mary Washington participated in the student group’s demonstration and were arrested for trespass alongside the nine students. These three individuals have no known connection to the University of Mary Washington. (However, UMW does permit members of the public to attend a demonstration on campus.) The Commonwealth elected to prosecute all three non-students for the trespass offense.On April 13, 2024, all three individuals entered pleas of no contest to their charges. The General District Court accepted plea agreements for all three to complete 20 hours of community service work, be of good behavior, and pay court costs. If the three individuals meet these requirements, the Court will dismiss their charges at a review hearing scheduled for December 17, 2024.
This handling is consistent with the approach that our office took in response to unrest and unlawful conduct in connection with the local protests in June 2020 in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. This handling also provides balanced accountability by requiring the nonstudents to be accountable to their role in the situation but still provides each individual with a path to a final dismissal of the charge for a situation that was motivated by a desire to exercise political speech in a peaceable demonstration. Like the students, all three nonstudent individuals were peaceable in the demonstration on April 27, 2024, and all three individuals were peaceable during the arrest.
On behalf of the Commonwealth, I wish to thank the University of Mary Washington administration, the University of Mary Washington Police Department, the Fredericksburg Police Department, and the Virginia State Police for their service and work on this situation for the Fredericksburg community.