‘Swarthmore 9′ protesters urge Delco DA to drop trespassing case tied to pro-Palestinian encampment
Members of the group, only one of whom is 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 are issuing a public plea to Delaware County prosecutors to drop the criminal charges they face.
The so-called “Swarthmore 9″ are planning to hold a news conference outside of the county courthouse in Media early Tuesday, ahead of a scheduled status hearing for their case.
The defendants — Jace Boland, Jonathan Britt, Mara Helen Cahill, Brendan Cook, Daria C. Dressler, Thomas Falcone, Andrew Gilbert, Colin Buckley Malcarney, and Riley J. McManus — have all been charged with trespassing, a third-degree misdemeanor.
Only one member of the group, Boland, is a student at the Quaker university. Another, 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.
Cook, in a statement Monday, said Swarthmore was using “carceral violence to punish activists and eliminating students’ First Amendment right to free expression and speech.” He asked why District Attorney Tanner Rouse was pursuing criminal charges against “anti-war activists.”
Their trial is scheduled to begin June 29 at the courthouse.
Swarthmore Borough Police arrested the group in May 2025 after issuing multiple warnings to members of an encampment that had formed outside of 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 oppose the war in Gaza. Those who gathered there 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 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 those 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 down 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.
