On July 2, the Lebanon District Court held a hearing for Roan Wade ’25 and Kevin Engel ’27, two student protesters arrested on misdemeanor criminal trespass charges in October. Wade and Engel filed a motion for the College to drop their charges on May 10, according to Engel.
At the hearing, the state filed a memorandum to advance their argument. The judge did not issue a decision and said deliberation will commence in 10 days. According to Kira Kelley, Wade and Engel’s lawyer, the defense will use the 10 days to respond to the state’s memorandum.
The two students were arrested on Oct. 27 while calling for Dartmouth to divest from organizations “that are complicit in apartheid and its apparatuses,” among other demands. Both pleaded not guilty to the trespassing charge during their Dec. 18 arraignment.
During the trial, Grafton assistant county attorney Mariana Pastore responded to a question from Judge Michael Mace regarding whether the College “prefers that its students have a criminal record versus a suspension.” As part of her response, Pastore stressed the importance of “tak[ing] a no.”
“Something I tell my 13-year-old daughter on a regular basis is, ‘You have to take a no,’” she said. “‘You have to take a no. Once in a while in life, you have to take a no.’”
Wade described this argument as “infantilizing.”
“It feels very demeaning, given that we came [to Dartmouth] to get an education and use the education to voice our concerns, that we would be infantilized in that way,” they said.
Despite Wade’s frustrations with elements of the hearing, Engel said that he and Wade hope to “secure the rights of future students” by going through the hearing process.
“What happened to me and Roan should not have happened,” he said. “What happened on May 1 should not have happened ... [The College has] to be held to a certain standard and protect students’ safety, and they’re just not meeting that standard.”
On May 1, 89 individuals were arrested at a pro-Palestinian protest on the Green. Pastore ultimately declined to press charges against at least 28 of the individuals arrested, according to past reporting by The Dartmouth. An additional 35 charges were reduced from misdemeanors to violations.
Wade said they and Engel stand in “full solidarity” with the other students who were arrested.
“The experience of getting arrested is really isolating,” Wade said. “The way it gets drawn out can also be very isolating and this sense of … precarity and not really knowing how things are going to play out, it’s something that we’re not alone in feeling.”
The College declined to comment on the hearing.
