Judge Lets Off IOP Protesters

A Middlesex County judge yesterday dismissed the case against four Harvard undergraduates who were arrested last month after disrupting a speech by the director of the FBI.

The quick decision brought to a close a two-week saga that prompted debate across the University about free speech on campus.

At the pre-trial hearing at Cambridge District Court yesterday morning, Justice Roanne Sragow said that Harvard had requested that the charges be dropped and said that it would handle the matter internally. She then dismissed the case.

The University released a statement on May 1 requesting that the charges be dropped, five days after the students were first arrested for their sustained interruption of a speech by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III at the Institute of Politics.

The four have also been informed by their senior tutors that they would not face punishment from the Administrative Board, the panel that handles student disciplinary cases.

Michael A. Gould-Wartofsky ’07, one of the arrested students, said he was pleased with the outcome.

“This is a good day for civil liberties and student rights because if Harvard had allowed its own students to be prosecuted for exercising their right to protest it would have really chilled free speech on our campus,” he said.

Gould-Wartofsky, Kelly L. Lee ’07, Maura A. Roosevelt ’07, and J. Claire Provost ’07 were facing charges of disturbing a public assembly.

The arrest came under scrutiny when a review of video footage from the event revealed several inconsistencies in the police report filed after their arrest, including an incorrect order of events and misquotations of the comments the students yelled. According to the students, they were also not given a warning before they were removed from the forum, which would represent a breach of free speech guidelines approved by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1990.

The rapid dismissal left the students pleased as they exited the courtroom.

“I am happy that it ended so quickly and relatively painlessly,” Lee said. “I really do think that it was all the media attention and community support that got it to end so quickly.”

Provost said that while she was pleased with the dismissal of the case, she hopes that it will not sweep issues of free speech and civil liberties on campus under the rug.

“I’m afraid that our treatment by the police has and will intimidate people from peaceful protest,” she said.

Provost and Gould-Wartofsky both said that Harvard should issue a public apology, which did not appear in the May 1 statement.

“Harvard has to make an active and public commitment to making free speech and peaceful dissent a mainstay of this campus,” Lee said.

Gould-Wartofsky, Provost, and Lee were represented by Daniel Beck, an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild, who sported a black tie adorned with anarchist symbols at the hearing. Roosevelt was represented by Robert LeBlanc, a public defender.

Gould-Wartofsky said that the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts was ready to help if the case progressed any further.

Gould-Wartofsky and Provost have served as members of the Crimson staff.

Provost wrote her last news article in May 2004 and Gould-Wartofsky is a former editorial columnist.

—Staff writer Jamison A. Hill can be reached at jahill@fas.harvard.edu.