A protester holds a sign stating, “Stop Genocide” at a demonstration protesting the war in Gaza and recent student arrests on Thursday. Credit: Arianna Smith | Editor in Chief
Two days after Yousuf Munir, a third-year in sociology, was arrested on criminal trespassing charges outside of Meiling Hall, they spoke out about how the nature of their arrest felt planned.
According to previous Lantern reporting, Munir and one other student were arrested at a rally for divestment and university democracy relating to the war in Gaza Tuesday.
Munir, a member of Ohio Youth for Climate Justice, said the group was conducting a mock vote on divestment from fossil fuel and Israel outside of Meiling Hall. They said Ohio State police told individuals speaking at the front of the protests that if they continued to “say the word ‘aye,’” they would be arrested.
“Previously, it was if people were chanting, then they would be arrested, but now it was just if people were speaking, they would be arrested,” Munir said.
Munir said they were not chanting but overheard the warning given by a cop and relayed it to another protester to make sure everyone knew what the risks were.
“It was after I relayed the warning from the cops to everyone else that the cops pointed me out and then dragged me into the building, where they had a room already set up for protesters that they were going to arrest. They were already planning on arresting us from the get-go, which I think is important,” Munir said.
Once they had been removed from the scene, Munir said they discovered the real reason for their arrest.
“It was only after I had been in handcuffs for a bit that I was informed that I was being arrested for criminal trespassing, even though what they had just said was that it was because I had been ‘chanting,’” Munir said.
According to the police report, a university official had informed the participating students of Ohio State’s restrictions on noise at the protest’s first location — Browning Amphitheater — and again outside of Meiling Hall where students began chanting.
The university’s space rules define disruptive noise as sound that interferes with the function of the university, including “amplified sound and other loud noise that is audible more than 50 feet from the source of the sound and/or noise occurring during the restricted hours above.”
However, Munir said the police “themselves were not referencing the space rules.”
According to university spokesperson Ben Johnson, the arrests were made due to the group’s volume level, which he said disrupted a meeting in the lobby of Meiling Hall where contributors to an arts magazine were gathered.
“Whether it’s one person or 10 people or 20 people that people feel disrupted, if they feel unsafe, if they feel like they’re being harassed, there’s a legal determination to be made,” Johnson said.
Munir said at the very beginning of the protest, the police told the group “not to use amplified sound,” so they didn’t have their megaphones out for the entirety of the process.
“We weren’t using the sound system that we brought,” Munir said.
Munir said the university is arresting them and other students “solely to distract us from the actual issues at hand.”
“That’s our university’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza and in the climate crisis. The university wants to distract us from the actual issues at hand, and it thinks by arresting one or two people, the movement will stop,” Munir said. “But reality is, the movement isn’t one or two people and this movement has new heroes and is led by each and every one of us and requires each and every one of us to be leaders and to be brave.”
