UPDATED
Answer comes as student rights organizations demand that charges been dropped.
Two student journalists were detained last week while covering a pro-Palestine rally on campus, and Dartmouth College apologized on Tuesday, saying they were doing their jobs.
Sian Beilock’s explanation came on the same day that Charlotte Hampton and Alesandra Gonzales’ and Charlotte Hampton’s costs were required to be dropped from the same institution. Both are investigators at The Dartmouth, an impartial student newspaper.
In a letter that was made available in the newspaper, Beilock wrote that” [t]he student editors for The Dartmouth who were on the Green should not have been detained for their jobs. ” We are working with local officials to fix this problem,” the statement read.
The president’s response, according to FIRE spokesman Katie Kortepeter, was” a step in the right direction,” but we are still carefully watching to see how Dartmouth responds with activity, according to FIRE spokesman Katie Kortepeter in an email.
In a letter signed by 15 organizations, including the National Press Club and the Student Press Law Center, FIRE reported to Beilock on Tuesday that Gonzales and Hampton had obtained media authorization to include the May 1 opposition and wore hit identifying while present.
Nothing in the text suggests that a journalist had an impact on the duties of law enforcement or college security.
But, Gonzales and Hampton were “pulled from a group of editors”, arrested, and charged with unlawful trespass, it continues.
The letter requests that Gonzales and Hampton’s accusations and any other possible administrative action be dropped quickly by the university and the local prosecutor’s office.
” Arresting editors engaged in legitimate information gathering set a dangerous precedent, harms the government’s right to know, and defies Dartmouth’s commitments to kids ‘ expressive and media right”, the letter says. ” More, charging the editors with trespass—on their personal campus—when Dartmouth had knowledge of and approved their existence defies logic”.
Additionally, it urges the New Hampshire school to work to prevent future instances of scholar journalists from doing the same.
During the May 1 opposition, the Hanover Police Department arrested 90 individuals after giving “multiple” distribution instructions, according to a media release. According to police, costs included restraining imprisonment and criminal trespass.
The school” specifically prohibits ] the use of houses and encampments on the Green and other areas of school,” according to The Dartmouth, school leaders even earlier in the day sent a campus-wide information reminding students.
Beilock backed her decision to call the police, even though she claimed on Tuesday that the two student journalists should not have been detained.
” Campaigns on other campuses sparked violent rage, horribly divided student bodies, created exclusionary areas, and attracted outside agitators. We have seen clearly over the last few weeks that, too often, encampments do not foster dialogue, they prevent it”, she said Tuesday.
However, Beilock added that college leaders are “working to ensure that anyone who was unintentionally swept up in the chaos on the Green, but not in violation of any Dartmouth policy, suffers no consequence.”
Editor’s note: The post has been updated to include a comment from FIRE.
MORE: UC San Diego experiences rioting as police detain 64 pro-Palestine encampment activists.
IMAGE: Dartmouth New Deal Coalition/Instagram
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