I was arrested a year ago today, while reporting for The Dartmouth.
Here is my experience that night:
We had heard that the Palestine Solidarity Coalition was going to set up tents on the Dartmouth Green in the evening.
So, in the late afternoon of May 1, the editors of The D met in the newsroom to discuss our approach. We saw a long night ahead. The editor-in-chief at the time, Emily Fagell ’25, told us the ground rules — to wear our press identification at all times and to listen to authorities.
Notebook and pen in hand, I went downstairs from The D’s office to the Green, where there were speakers and folk music. My role was to send messages to editors across the street minute-by-minute so they could publish live updates. The other reporters and I took note of every detail: a car circling the Green blasting music in Hebrew with an Israeli flag hanging out its window, campus security officers huddled in the distance. For much of the evening, I could see my colleagues sitting by the newsroom window looking over the Green and furiously typing updates onto the website.
Suddenly, a speaker called for people to link arms and form a circle. Some whipped pegs and metal poles out of their bags and brought them into the center, every movement choreographed. They pitched five tents hurriedly, as though they might be stopped before all the poles were in the ground.
Other reporters and I stood in the center of the circle, taking pictures of the signs calling for divestment, framed by Baker tower. In front of one of the tents, a student set up a library of 15 books, suggesting he planned to stay: “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” “Eichmann in Jerusalem” and “Art on My Mind” among them. Security officers from the college firmly called for the protesters to leave, but they did not comply.
As the sun set, about 20 cars rolled up to the Green, filled with local police and state troopers in riot gear. They warned everyone to leave the premises, or risk arrest. A flood light gave their visors a misty sheen, so you couldn’t see the individuals’ faces. After 15 minutes or so, they slowly walked towards the protesters, whose numbers had dwindled.
At that point, a photographer from The D, Dre Gonzales, and I still stood with a representative from the Dartmouth communications office and all of the other press. We watched the cops arrest protesters one by one and then saw them throw Annelise Orleck, a well-known history professor, to the ground. Dre lay on the grass, filming Professor Orleck in the distance, and I tried to peer through the wall of officers. As Dre rose, the police grabbed her. She melted in their arms and cried out my name. I told them not to take her because she was a reporter, but the words seemed meaningless to them. Then they grabbed me too.
They bound our wrists with zip ties and loaded us into a Dartmouth Outing Club van. I sat next to Professor Orleck for the comfort of being with a teacher and on the way to the police station in West Lebanon, New Hampshire, the group softly sang “This little light of mine” and “We shall not be moved.” It reminded me of singing on canoeing and hiking trips — the last time I was in one of those vans. Dre wept on my shoulder.
The police let us out from the holding cell one by one to take our mugshots. One protester requested to borrow a woman’s keffiyeh for the photo to commemorate the evening. The woman complied, folded it into triangled thirds and laid it on her shoulders gently.
Editors from the paper picked me and Dre up from the jail and paid our $40 bail. When we got back to the newsroom, it was alive as I had never seen it before. The D is smaller than its peers; Dartmouth is a small school. But reporters, videographers and photographers spilled out of the room, all eager to hear about our 30 minutes in the holding cell and what coverage we thought should come next. We stayed up until the early morning that night while members of the Editorial Board wrote an opinion piece that called for the charges against me and Dre to be dropped. Friends of one editor filed into the newsroom, having heard about our arrests. Someone brought pizza. Another brought freshly baked cookies, tea and a kettle. He went around and asked us if we wanted mint or chamomile.
I started writing for The D during fall of my freshman year, with little journalistic experience. I wanted an activity to commit myself to and loved reading, writing and talking to people. I knew journalism wasn’t static, and that it came with challenges, but I never expected that I would be arrested for trying to cover the truth. I experienced the fragility of free speech that night.
There was an outpouring of support for me and Dre from professors, community members, students and advocacy groups. About a week later, President Beilock published an open letter in our paper, admitting “the student journalists for The Dartmouth who were on the Green to report on the protests should not have been arrested.” The Court filed a motion to vacate my bail conditions.
In the days after I got arrested, the Green was quiet as spring slowly rolled around here in New Hampshire. Everyone else was on the grass, reading, napping and eating together in the sunshine. Before the case was settled, my bail conditions stipulated that I wasn’t allowed to walk across our campus quad. I rode my bike around the big square in the center of campus, a few minutes late to every class.
Charlotte Hampton is the editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth. She hails from New York, N.Y., and is studying government and philosophy at the College.
She can be reached at editor@thedartmouth.com or on Signal at 9176831832.
