Two pro-Palestinian protesters — one student and one College employee — were arrested during a moderated discussion with Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., on Wednesday evening. Fetterman was speaking in Filene Auditorium as part of the Rockefeller Center for Public Policy’s 2024 Election Speaker Series.
The two protesters, Greyson Xiao ’25 and Registrar’s Office service specialist Emma Herndon, were charged with disorderly conduct, according to a Hanover Police Department media release.
The arrests come nearly one year after Hanover Police arrested two students — Roan Wade ’25 and Kevin Engel ’27 — for misdemeanor counts of trespassing. Wade and Engel had been encamped on the front lawn of Parkhurst Hall to advocate for “divesting the College’s endowment from all organizations that are complicit in apartheid and its apparatuses,” among other aims. Six months later, police arrested 89 individuals at a pro-Palestinian protest on the Green.
Around 26 minutes into the event with Fetterman, Xiao and Herndon, who had been seated in Filene, stood and chanted, “Fetterman, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide,” among other phrases. They were removed by Hanover Police officers after about one minute.
“Is this free speech?” one of them cried out as they were being escorted from the auditorium.
According to College spokesperson Jana Barnello, a Dartmouth open expression facilitator — identified by The Dartmouth as assistant dean for student life Edward McKenna — asked the protesters “multiple times to either stop the interruption and remain at the event, or leave so that it could continue.”
“When attempts to resolve the situation were unsuccessful, the Hanover Police Department — which was already on site for the event with a sitting U.S. senator — decided to remove the two individuals from the event,” Barnello wrote.
According to a College official familiar with the matter, the College did not ask Hanover Police to make the arrests.
In addition to the two arrested individuals, three other protesters also disrupted the event “minutes earlier,” according to Barnello. The three earlier protesters stood and began to protest the Israel-Hamas war. Statements included “There are children dying,” “Their blood is on your hands” and “Think of your children.” A group of approximately 25 individuals also protested outside of Moore Hall, where Filene is located.
The three protesters in Filene were asked to leave by the open expression facilitator and did so “without incident,” according to Barnello.
Fetterman responded to both the first and second disruptions during the event. After the first, he said he does not value the lives of his children more than the lives of those in Gaza. After the second, he said he was not attempting to hide.
“I’m here in lights and I have a microphone,” he said. “I’m not hiding. I’m here and saying, ‘Let’s have a conversation here.’”
According to NPR, Fetterman “ardently supported” Israel after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, putting him “in conflict” with some progressives. At the same time, Fetterman said during the event that he was sympathetic to the students’ cause.
“I wish I could talk to them,” he said. “I would say, ‘You may not believe this, or even care, but I am very pro-Palestinian, no different from you in some sense. I grieve the tragedy and the death and the misery.’”
In an interview after the Oct. 23 protest, Wade alleged that McKenna has repeatedly “harras[ed] student leaders” such as them and Engel. Harper Richardson ’27 also alleged that McKenna had “followed” her throughout the evening.
“We disagree with that characterization,” Barnello wrote in a follow-up statement to The Dartmouth.
Open expression facilitators — such as McKenna — are positioned as “neutral observers at designated events,” The Dartmouth reported in September. The program also “offers guidance to student organizations on the Freedom of Expression and Dissent Policy.” Freedom of expression and dissent is “protected by Dartmouth regulations,” Barnello wrote.
“As stated in our policy, ‘protest or demonstration shall not be discouraged … so long as the orderly processes of the institution are not deliberately obstructed. Membership in the Dartmouth community carries with it, as a necessary condition, the agreement to honor and abide by this policy,’” she wrote.
Update Appended (Oct. 24, 10:17 p.m.): This article has been updated to include a follow-up statement from Barnello regarding Wade's statement.
