Quick Take
A UC Santa Cruz student who participated in pro-Palestine protests last year is facing charges including resisting arrest and providing false information after they were arrested at demonstrations in May and in October. The local case was filed Friday as the federal government escalates threats to cut funding to universities that the Trump administration accuses of allowing harassment of Jewish students during pro-Palestine actions over the past year.
The Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office is launching its first prosecution related to pro-Palestine protests on UC Santa Cruz’s campus last year, filing a slate of charges against a single student, including battery against a police officer, resisting arrest and providing false information.
The charges come against a backdrop of intensifying federal pressure on universities nationwide to crack down on pro-Palestine campus activists, with the Trump administration arresting a campus protest leader and withholding funds from Columbia University over accusations it failed to safeguard Jewish students.
The district attorney filed formal charges against the UCSC student on Friday in Santa Cruz County Superior Court. The student was one of 124 people arrested during the police raid of a Gaza solidarity encampment on May 30 and 31, 2024. The student was arrested a second time during a campus rally in October. The charges are related to both arrests.
The district attorney’s office told Lookout it’s not currently reviewing any other cases from the May arrests. UCSC police forwarded three other cases from those arrests to the DA, but after reviewing them, the office declined to pursue charges, according to Assistant District Attorney Steve Drottar.
“We do not have any other cases that have been submitted for review from UCSC on the protests right now,” he said Monday.
Lookout is choosing not to publish the name of the student because they said they are still without legal representation and they’re concerned for their safety. The student has an arraignment scheduled for March 28.
After the May 30 arrest, the student continued their studies at UCSC and didn’t face any charges. Months later, on Oct. 7, 2024, the student attended a rally to mark the first anniversary of Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the start of the war in Gaza, alongside about 80 other supporters.
After the rally ended, bystanders told Lookout the student was approached by police, who told the student they couldn’t wear a mask and use a bullhorn, and asked them to identify themselves. Bystanders told Lookout that police pushed the student away from a group they were standing with and then picked up the student and put them in a police car.
The University of California’s new free speech policies – called time, place and manner policies – prohibit people from wearing masks to hide their identity while breaking policy or not identifying themselves to campus officials when requested. Students and faculty have said the policies are unclear and activists have called them an attempt to suppress protests.
Drottar told Lookout that UCSC police submitted reports against the student after the October incident for both the May 30 arrest and the October arrest. All of the charges are misdemeanors and range from “resist, obstruct or delay peace officer,” to “giving false information to a police officer” and “riot, rout: remaining after warning to disperse.”
UC Santa Cruz spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason and campus police chief Kevin Domby declined to say what specifically the student did to resist arrest or riot on May 30. As for the Oct. 7 incident, Hernandez-Jason said police approached someone who appeared to be violating “university policy and possibly state law.”
“As officers sought to detain and identify the person, they refused to identify themself,” he wrote in an email. “When officers attempted to arrest the person they physically resisted the arrest and assaulted an officer. The individual was ultimately taken into custody and booked in the county jail.”
Hernandez-Jason didn’t provide specifics on how the student assaulted an officer and resisted arrest. He also didn’t answer questions about why the university pursued charges months after the incidents, or if the university is pursuing charges against others arrested at the encampment in late May.
“The UCSC Police Department regularly submits completed investigative reports for review by the district attorney,” he wrote. “The decision related to filing rests with the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office following their review.”
Hernandez-Jason and Domby did not respond to questions about whether the decision to pursue charges is related to the Trump administration’s recent threats against universities.
The charges were in focus during a regular quarterly meeting between UCSC administrators and faculty on Wednesday, where Chancellor Cythia Larive was pressed on whether she or other campus officials approved pursuing charges against the student at a time when President Donald Trump is calling for arrests of protesting students.
Larive told the meeting she can’t comment on ongoing legal matters. “I’m not involved in those processes,” she said. “I don’t have any authority over the district attorney, and I’m not able to comment about the litigation, but we do try to work hard to support everybody’s rights.”
On Saturday, authorities detained Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student who led pro-Palestine protests on that school’s campus this past year. Trump administration officials have said they intend to deport Kahlil, a legal permanent resident of Palestinian heritage. The White House also canceled $400 million in federal funds to Columbia on Friday and sent warning letters to 60 universities, including UC Berkeley and UCLA, over what the administration says are failures to protect Jewish students.
“This is the first arrest of many to come,” Trump wrote on social media of Kahlil’s arrest. “We know there are more students at Columbia and other universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it.”
Thomas C. Seabaugh, a Los Angeles-based civil rights attorney, told Lookout the timing of the charges at UCSC “is a concern,” coming during a wider crackdown on pro-Palestine college activists across the country and the Trump administration’s threats against protesters and universities.
“It’s hard not to see what’s happening at UCSC, and around the country, as not being part of that, and being tainted by that,” he said. “Why now? Why a year after the fact over such petty things?”
Seabaugh is representing a different UCSC student in a lawsuit against the university’s campus bans implemented to keep those arrested on May 30, 2024, at the encampment off campus. Days after Seabaugh launched the legal case, police seized his client’s phone in what he said appears to be direct retaliation for the lawsuit.
Seabaugh said he thinks university administrators are hitting a moment when they have to take sides to either support or oppose White House policies.
“I think students and faculty and parents of students want to know, are you going to defend students, or are you going to be accomplices in this crackdown?” he said. “And for a university like UCSC, which I’m sure prides itself in theory on being a center of tolerance and enlightenment and progressive thought, is this going to be a place of tyranny, or is it going to be a place where the students are free to speak their minds?”
Rebecca Gross, chair of the graduate student union at UC Santa Cruz, said she’s upset that the university chose to press charges at a time when the campus is dealing with other challenges, such as its budget deficit.
“It’s just ridiculous that the university has any desire to pursue these charges, given the crises that they should be focused on right now,” she said.
Gross said she doesn’t think many people on campus know about the charges against the UCSC student yet. But the news of Khalil’s arrest has made waves. She said graduate students are ramping up preparations in anticipation of any immigration actions at the university. They’re researching how to respond if federal immigration agents appear on campus and trying to get training for graduate students on that.
“People are concerned,” she said. “I don’t think people are panicking, but I think there’s an air of anxiety. And I think some people that have been loud are now feeling the impulse to get quieter, and others are feeling the impulse to get louder.”
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