Updated March 27 at 3pm:
Three Vanderbilt students have been charged by the Nashville and Davidson County Magistrate’s Office with Class A misdemeanor assault, and a fourth with vandalism, according to Vanderbilt spokesperson Julia Jordan.
Jordan says the assault charges were filed “after [three students pushed] a Community Service Officer and a staff member who offered to meet with them as they entered Kirkland Hall on Tuesday,” and that “a fourth student has been charged with vandalism after breaking a window on the building’s exterior last evening.”
Additionally, Jordan says “all of the protest participants who breached the building will be placed on interim suspension.”
Students had come to the university’s administrative building to protest the school’s suppression of pro-Palestinian student government action. They continued to demonstrate outside Kirkland Hall last night and Wednesday. Jordan’s statement says that the university will “work with them to ensure they can remain consistent with the university’s policies for peaceful demonstration.”
She also offered additional comment on yesterday’s arrest of Nashville Scene reporter Eli Motycka.
From Jordan’s written statement:
“Yesterday’s protest at Kirkland Hall was not a peaceful one. It began with the assault of a Vanderbilt community service officer and continued with protesters physically pushing Vanderbilt staff members with the hope of entering and occupying the chancellor’s office. As a result, the building remained on lockdown and members of VUPD were on high alert. It is in this context that the Nashville Scene reporter, after repeated attempts to enter the administration building through multiple locked doors with signs noting the building was closed and being told by officers it was off limits, was eventually detained, arrested and released without charges filed.
It has long been the practice of Vanderbilt University to grant access to members of the media who request and receive clearance to be on campus. In yesterday’s case, though the reporter made his presence known, he did not have permission to access locked administrative buildings, which are on private property.”
As he was being arrested Tuesday, Motycka said that he had not been warned that he was considered to be trespassing and might be arrested.
Original story below:
Vanderbilt University police officers arrested Nashville Scene reporter Eli Motycka Tuesday afternoon as he was covering a student demonstration on campus. A video posted by the Scene on Twitter shows officers putting Motycka in handcuffs and informing him that he is under arrest for criminal trespass. Motycka, with his press credentials hanging from his neck, can be heard telling the officers he had not received any warning that he was trespassing.
The campus paper, the Vanderbilt Hustler, reported that “multiple students” have been suspended for protesting and that the paper has been barred from reporting inside Kirkland Hall, which houses the administration offices.
A group of students had organized a sit-in inside Vanderbilt’s Kirkland Hall, the Hustler reported, with a larger group rallying outside. They’d come to protest the university’s recent decision to block a student government vote on a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) resolution. The Scene recently reported that the resolution had been brought by campus chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine in response to Israel’s military offensive in Gaza – which has killed 32,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health – following the Hamas attack on Israel last October.
Scene photographer Matt Masters, who recorded the arrest on his phone, tells the Banner that he and Motycka were outside Kirkland Hall, which was locked. Masters says that they looked in the windows of the building and tried to open several doors to see if they could go inside where the sit-in was taking place. When a Vanderbilt police officer approached them and asked them to identify themselves, Masters says, Motycka identified himself and then redirected his attention to his phone, as he was trying to contact Vanderbilt communications staff.
Masters said the officer asked why Motycka was ignoring him to which Masters replied that Motycka was on the phone and asked the officer if he was issuing a lawful order. Masters said the officer didn’t respond.
“He goes and gets another officer and tells him to arrest Eli for trespassing,” Masters said.
In a statement, a Vanderbilt spokesperson tells the Banner, “The [Scene] reporter was attempting to enter Kirkland Hall, an administrative building. The building has been closed to the public for weeks due to ongoing construction and there are signs on every door clearly stating this. He was informed by university police that the building was closed and was asked to leave several times. After repeated attempts to enter the building, he was detained.”
The Scene’s video shows Motycka being led in handcuffs by officers to a police vehicle as he explains that he is a reporter doing his job and that he had not been told he was risking arrest by being there.
“It’s alarming that Vanderbilt University, with so many eyes on them over these student protests, would arrest a reporter in the process of trying to do his job,” Scene editor-in-chief Patrick Rodgers told the Banner by phone from the Vanderbilt campus where he was trying to retrieve his reporter.
Motycka has since been released.
In a statement to the Banner, Davidson County District Attorney Glenn Funk says “this office will not prosecute a reporter for peacefully doing his or her job.”