UConn professors want protesters’ charges dropped
Storrs — More than 300 professors at the University of Connecticut signed a letter to the administration asking it to drop the charges against students arrested last month during campus pro-Palestinian protests.
The open letter also called on administrators to refrain from carrying out any disciplinary action against the students and to allow them to make up for missed exams or final papers.
The letter was sent to the university Wednesday, said Melanie Newport, an assistant history professor.
“For every person who signed it, there are still more who are concerned but are afraid to,” Newport said. The UConn chapter of the American Association of University Professors has 2,300 members.
“We, the undersigned faculty and faculty leaders at UConn, deplore the actions taken by the UConn administration to suppress nonviolent student protests on campus,” the letter says. “The university action was unwarranted and disproportionate. It was inconsistent with the university’s role in protecting free speech and civil discourse.”
The letter also urges UConn administrators to guarantee “student, staff and faculty rights to free speech, peaceable assembly and protest on pressing issues of the day.”
Newport said Thursday that universities are supposed to be centers of free expression.
“If we don’t have the moral authority to create a space to have tough conversations, we don’t have any credibility as an institution of higher learning,” she said.
Twenty-five people were arrested on campus April 30, according to the university. All but one were current students, an organizer told CT Insider. The students were arrested because they repeatedly ignored officers’ orders to remove tents and disperse, UConn spokesperson Stephanie Reitz said at the time.
On Thursday, Reitz said UConn supports the state’s attorney’s recommendation to let the students apply for the court’s first-time time offender program, called accelerated rehabilitation, should they choose that option. Successful completion of the program can lead to the dismissal of the defendant’s charges.
As far as disciplinary action is concerned, she said,”federal student privacy laws prohibit UConn and other institutions from disclosing whether specific student(s) may or may not face conduct reviews regarding these or any other actions.”
UConn has procedures in place that allow students to request rescheduling of exams if they have multiple finals around the same time, an illness or other extenuating circumstances, she said. She didn’t say if protest-related activities would qualify as a reason, but she said in a written statement that “the university encourages any student to exercise this option when they believe their circumstances may warrant it.” Classes have ended for the semester; graduation ceremonies took place Saturday through Monday.
About future protests, “UConn has consistently supported and respected all people’s rights of free speech and assembly, including when the students had held peaceful events without incident in the week before the encampment had to be dispersed,” Reitz said.