This past June, the nine people arrested on Swarthmore’s campus in May 2025 for their involvement in a pro-Palestinian encampment entered a plea deal with the Delaware County District Attorney’s (DA) office. The trial resulted in the “Swarthmore Nine” accepting eight hours of community service, along with the payment of around $273 per person in court costs.
The defendants entered no-contest pleas to summary noise violation (“summary” is the lowest level of criminal charge in Pennsylvania), meaning they accepted the punishment and chose not to contest the charges, which were reduced from misdemeanor trespassing. The plea deal marks an end to the 14-month long clash between the protesters, the school, and the DA’s office.
The Spring 2025 encampment
On April 30, 2026, a group of students involved with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and other pro-Palestine organizers constructed an encampment on Old Science Hall lawn (known as “Trotter lawn” at the time). The group advocated for the college to divest from Cisco, a global technology company, which they claim is profiting from the Israeli “apartheid and ongoing genocide.”
Four days later, on May 3, 2025, nine people were arrested for refusing to leave the encampment, which the college claimed was endangering the campus community. Of the nine, two protestors were affiliated with the college.
The encampment lasted for four days before protesters received a “final warning” from Vice President of Student Affairs Stephanie Ives notifying them that they would risk arrest or expulsion from the college if they did not leave. On the morning of May 3, over 30 police officers from eight nearby departments dismantled the encampment, arresting all protesters on misdemeanor trespassing charges. In the wake of the arrests, the protestors faced potential consequences including up to one year in jail, permanent criminal records, and $2,000 in maximum fines.
The arrests sparked controversy across the campus community, with both faculty and students speaking out.
“The Swarthmore Nine” go to court
The protesters appeared at a preliminary hearing in July 2025, followed by a formal arraignment, where the defendants received formal charges and were given the opportunity to make a plea, in August.
In an interview with The Phoenix, Jace Boland ’27 explained that the nine defendants were offered an initial deal early in the summer of 2025, including the same community service hours and court costs that they ultimately accepted, but with an opportunity to strike the offense from their records.
The DA’s office confirmed this claim in their statement after the case’s conclusion, adding that if the defendants “performed their community service before the formal arraignment, the case would have been withdrawn entirely.”
Boland explained that the group initially rejected the deal in the hopes of “call[ing] Swarthmore’s bluff.” He explained that the arrests were “unprecedented” for Swarthmore and that allowing the college to return to “business as usual” and establish a standard for shutting down student protests seemed like a betrayal of the values the encampment embodied.
“It gave us a really huge opportunity to bring a focus back on the genocide and back on the repression that people around the country were facing as a result of protesting against it.”
Later in the summer, according to an August 2025 post on SJP’s Instagram account, Boland and former student Brendan Cook received suspensions banning them from campus until January 2026. The post also claimed that the suspensions were the “harshest sanction Swarthmore has imposed on student protesters in recent years.”
In November, a trial date was set for spring 2026. Later, it was moved to June 29, and then July 1.
The defense holds a press conference
On June 9, 2026, all nine defendants held a press conference in front of the Delaware County Courthouse, urging the DA to drop the charges. Boland spoke to the crowd, arguing, “We affirm that we are guilty of nothing because it is always right to rebel against genocide.”
The defendants were accompanied by a small group of supporters, including additional Swarthmore College students and faculty members. Among them was James Hormel Chair of Social Justice and Professor of Religion Mark Wallace. In an email to The Phoenix, Wallace explained that he was drawn to speak at the courthouse because “the Swarthmore 9 are a model of free speech in a democratic society and should be supported accordingly.”
He added, “As an educator, I am committed to the College’s core values: intellectual rigor and social responsibility. But I felt that Swarthmore betrayed these ideals by prosecuting students and their colleagues for peacefully protesting on the College’s lawn.”
The motion to dismiss the case is denied
Also in June, the defense’s lawyer, Marni Jo Snyder, filed a motion to dismiss the criminal charges on the grounds that Swarthmore and county prosecutors violated the protestors’ constitutional rights by arresting them.
Additionally, she argued that the defendants were specifically targeted by the college because they were demonstrating against the war in Gaza, noting that although the campus is private property, other protests had been allowed to occur, implying the college was discriminating against the group for their political perspectives.
Wallace noted that much of the mainstream media covering the trial failed to reflect that Swarthmore College has historically been celebrated as a site of protest, mentioning successful student campaigns to divest from apartheid South Africa and the fossil fuel industry.
He explained, “In every case, Swarthmore handled student dissent as an internal disciplinary matter. In none of these cases did the College organize the arrest and prosecution of its own students. Why the sudden shift from tolerance to calling in the police, banning free speech and supporting criminal trials?”
On June 22, the day of the hearing, Judge Dominic Pileggi denied the motion to dismiss — the defendants would go to trial on July 1.
The defendants enter a plea deal
On Monday, June 29, just days before the trial was set to begin, the defendants entered a plea deal, accepting a charge of a summary noise violation. Boland noted that the decision to enter the deal polarized the group of nine, with some members confident that they could win the case and others worried that a loss would send a pessimistic message to other protestors. Ultimately, he explained, the group agreed not to take the case to trial unless each defendant was on board; as the decision was split, they accepted the plea deal.
The DA’s Office declined to respond to The Phoenix’s questions, reiterating their previous statement, published after the plea deal in June. DA Tanner Rouse reflected that the matter “concluded in the same way that every other defiant trespass case that we have handled during [his] time in the office has concluded.”
In an email exchange with The Phoenix, Andy Hirsch, Vice President of Communications and Marketing, affirmed that the DA’s office did not consult with the college about the agreements [of the plea deal] beforehand — they “only learned about the outcome after the fact and second-hand.”
In a July 1 email to the Swarthmore College community titled “Moving Forward,” President Val Smith took the opportunity to reaffirm the college’s commitment to free speech, citing the “over 100 incidents of activism” that have taken place over the past two years on campus with no interruption from the college. Smith claimed that the only instances of intervention occurred when groups “breached the policies and practices” of the campus community.
Additionally, Smith noted that the college has no direct holdings in companies such as Cisco; rather, they invest in fund managers, who control pooled funds made up of many individual companies. The college estimates that Cisco accounts for roughly 0.05% of the total endowment value. If they were to divest, Smith wrote, they would lose relationships with fund managers, losing multiple companies and “eroding the support the endowment can provide.”
On the same day, the defendants released a statement about the plea deal, noting that the decision to accept it was “far from unanimous.” However, the statement acknowledged the defendants’ success in “exposing Swarthmore’s investments in genocide and its repression of pro-Palestine organizing.” The statement noted additional instances of “political repression,” such as the “Michigan 8” and “Minneapolis 15,” and concluded with a call to action:
“All the effort you have given our case should be redoubled and turned back against Swarthmore and its bloodstained investments; and in support of our comrades facing repression. The powerful movement we built for our case cannot vanish with this plea — we call on you to train your guns on the Zionist entity and the imperialist state, until we are all free.”
Four days later, Swarthmore published a response condemning the statement: “No reasonable person can read this post and not see it as a call to violence.” The message adds that the college is “contemplating” how to address the statement, but no further update has been given since July.
While Swarthmore officially revoked SJP’s affiliation with the college in 2025, the group’s Instagram account is still active. When asked about his final year at Swarthmore, Boland reflected, “It’s good for me to know that there are people that are stepping into Swarthmore knowing what a lot of us had to learn over the course of a few years being here.”
