‘Swarthmore 9’ protesters urge Delco DA to drop trespassing case tied to pro-Palestinian encampment
Members of the group, only one of them a student at Swarthmore College, said Delaware County prosecutors violated their rights by charging them with trespassing.
Nine protesters arrested last year at a pro-Palestinian encampment at Swarthmore College said Tuesday that they had done nothing wrong and have no intention of pleading guilty to the trespassing charges they face.
“We affirm that we are guilty of nothing because it is always right to rebel against genocide,” Jace Boland, a junior at the college, said at a news conference on the steps of the Delaware County Courthouse.
Boland was joined by his eight codefendants and a small crowd of supporters in urging prosecutors to drop what they described as “absurd criminal charges.”
The so-called Swarthmore 9 were arrested and briefly detained on the college’s campus in May 2025 when officers from surrounding police departments dismantled their encampment protesting the war in Gaza and Swarthmore’s contract with a company that does business with the Israeli government.
Of the nine people arrested, only Boland is a student at the college. Another, Brendan Cook, is a former student who was suspended for participating in an earlier protest in 2024, but the rest are not affiliated with Swarthmore, according to school officials.
Members of the group — Boland, Cook, Jonathan Britt, Mara Helen Cahill, Daria C. Dressler, Thomas Falcone, Colin Buckley Malcarney, Riley J. McManus, and Andrew Thomas — have all been charged with trespassing, a third-degree misdemeanor.
Their attorney, Marni Jo Snyder, has filed a motion to dismiss the case that will be argued before Delaware County Court Judge Dominic Pileggi on June 22, a week before the group’s scheduled trial.
District Attorney Tanner Rouse said Tuesday that prosecutors had offered the group the chance to plead to a lesser, summary offense, which Rouse described as “akin to an ‘open container’ or noise violation ticket.”
“That they want to proceed to trial as charged is absolutely their right, but so is it the commonwealth’s right to protect the interests of private citizens and institutions that do not have to abide every random person who has an issue parking on their front lawn,” Rouse said. “Private property owners have a right to say ‘please leave’ when the time comes.
“If their concern is a criminal charge or exposure to judicial punishment, there is and always has been an easy off-ramp available to them,” he added. “They have chosen not to take it.”
At Tuesday’s news conference, Swarthmore professor Mark Wallace said he supports the protesters and believes the college betrayed the ideals on which it was founded by having them arrested.
“How can students who live and work on a campus be charged with trespassing there while applying what they’re learning in the real world?” he asked. “Colleges should be places where large, uncomfortable questions are asked and struggled over.”
A spokesperson for Swarthmore did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
Previously, the college, in a statement, echoed what Rouse said Tuesday — that county prosecutors had offered to reduce the charges in the case to a summary offense if the defendants pleaded guilty, but they declined.
Boland said he and the others charged would not plead guilty, fearful that doing so would discourage future activism.
“If the college can deploy state violence to protect its interests without consequence, there is no telling what levels of repression future generations of student activists will face,” Boland said. “Swarthmore College cannot continue to benefit from its reputation as a liberal arts institution that encourages activism while simultaneously crushing dissent.”
Swarthmore Borough police arrested the group in May 2025 after issuing multiple warnings to members of an encampment that had formed outside Swarthmore’s Trotter Hall.
The encampment, which protesters referred to as the Hossam Shabat Liberation Zone in honor of a journalist killed in an Israeli drone strike, was formed to demanded that Swarthmore end its IT support contract with Cisco, which also holds contracts with the Israeli government.
Swarthmore College president Valerie Smith wrote in a letter last year that members of the Liberation Zone created their enclosure using campus property and had vandalized other parts of campus with incendiary graffiti.
Smith wrote that she “unequivocally condemn[ed]” the group’s actions and said that law enforcement officials, including the FBI, told her to dismantle the encampment as soon as possible.
“I urge these protesters to pursue a less divisive approach to expressing their views — one that aligns with not just the College’s policies, but with the mutual respect, compassion, and care that all in our community deserve,” Smith wrote in the letter.
Days before the protesters were arrested, campus police forcibly took back some of the items they had taken to build the encampment, and issued disbandment orders to people they found within it.
On the day police came to clear out the encampment, they gave protesters a 10-minute warning to vacate the property.
The protesters refused to leave, sitting with their arms interlocked, according to video of the arrests posted by the Swarthmore chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.
All nine of the protesters charged in the case were detained briefly and released on unsecured bail.
