Cady de la Cruz wasn’t surprised when the University of Virginia withheld her diploma. She knew it was a possibility, she said. After all, UVA wasn’t the first university to hold back degrees from students arrested during the breakup of the pro-Palestine encampments that spread across the country this spring.
“I’m not surprised but disappointed,” de la Cruz said in a phone interview with Charlottesville Tomorrow in late June. “A lot of the times I feel silenced. I feel like a lot of UVA’s actions have kind of muzzled me.”
De la Cruz was one of 11 students who were arrested during the disbandment of UVA’s pro-Palestine camp and is now caught in the uncertainty of what their academic disciplinary punishment will be — it can be anything from no sanctions to expulsion. Their fate won’t be decided until the University Judiciary Committee (UJC), a student-run judiciary body authorized to investigate alleged violations of the university’s standards of conduct, holds a trial sometime in the fall.
For de la Cruz and three other recently graduated students, this means facing the job market without knowing the fate of their diplomas.
“We’re all super on edge about accepting jobs and applying to them as well,” she said.
It’s unclear whether the possibility of expulsion as an extreme form of sanction would mean losing the degrees they wrapped up this spring.
“If the UJC sanctions expulsion prior to degree conferral, a student would not receive their degree,” said Harper Jones, UVA student and UJC chair. “The UJC prioritizes educational, restorative sanctions. A trial panel very rarely sanctions expulsion, and this is reflected in sanctioning trends from the last decade.”
This is in addition to the possibility of having a criminal record. The Commonwealth hasn’t dropped the trespassing charges yet — the charges against de la Cruz and others are scheduled to be dropped in August, pending good behavior, de la Cruz said. On May 4, students like de la Cruz also received no-trespass orders issued by UVA, but they were dropped by the time of graduation because they were no longer seen as an immediate threat, according to a letter to faculty and staff written by Kenyon Bonner, UVA’s Vice President and Chief Student Affairs Officer.
It’s a lot of consequences for something de la Cruz believes was within her constitutional rights and a moral obligation to do.
De la Cruz, like many students arrested across the nation during the often violent breakdown of pro-Palestine encampments, is now caught in the aftermath of universities trying to figure out whether their form of protest crossed the line of freedom of speech on campus. If that were the case, what’s the proper punishment?
UJC only takes cases if someone at UVA, whether it’s a student, community members, staff, or administration, files a complaint. The student committee then decides whether the case should go to trial. In the case of de la Cruz and other students arrested on May 4, the complaints against them were filed by Donovan Golich and Elizabeth Ortiz, both employees of the Student Affairs Division. If Golich and Ortiz withdrew the complaints, there would be no trial.
Neither Golich nor Ortiz have responded to Charlottesville Tomorrow’s request for a comment.
UVA’s spokesperson Brian Coy said that the university is prohibited from discussing details of any specific case, but when asked about the reasoning behind the charges related to May 4, he clarified that charges are usually filed with the UJC when employees of Policy, Accountability, and Critical Events unit of Student Affairs, or PACE, are notified of alleged violations of the University’s Standards of Conduct.
UJC has a full sanctioning authority and they choose anything from no sanctions to expulsion.
In a letter signed by dozens and sent to the university administration in June, UVA community members criticized the university’s decision to use UJC and demanded the charges be dropped. It also expressed concern that UJC’s inability to undertake the case until the fall semester has an outsized impact on accused students, especially the four who recently graduated.
“UVA officials’ decision to refer these cases to UJC is an inappropriate abuse of student governance for the sake of drastic retaliation against students for exercising their First Amendment rights in demanding an institutional response to an ongoing genocide,” the letter said.
The letter expressed concern that the Student Affairs Division in its role as the ones who filed the complaint, might leave the student committee feeling that “they have no choice but to bring these cases to trial.”
“These students were really brave,” Laura Goldblatt, an assistant professor at UVA and one of the signatories to the letter calling for the charges to be dropped, told Charlottesville Tomorrow.
“They were protesting a genocide in Palestine, the moral issue of our time, and they were very upset about their University’s potential financial and institutional entanglements in the genocide. They are honoring UVA’s call to be great and good. They were trying to push the university to be great and good. And in response, the university is doing everything it can to punish those students.”
UVA officials disagree.
“There is simply no truth to the assertion that routine use of the University’s student-governed accountability process is somehow a form of retaliation,” wrote Bonner, UVA’s Vice President and Chief Student Affairs Officer, in response to the letter. His response was shared with Charlottesville Tomorrow by Coy, UVA’s spokesperson.
Bonner said most of the complaints to UJC are filed by the Student Affairs and Dean of Students office and that no administrative body has the authority to influence or overturn UJC’s decision. They can, however, file an appeal of the outcome of the trial to the Judicial Review Board (JRB), which is composed of faculty, staff and students.
Harper Jones, UJC chair, also rejected the idea that the administration has any influence over the committee’s decision.
“Claims that Student Affairs has placed pressure on the UJC in any circumstance are unfounded and delegitimize the UJC’s status as an independent, student-run organization,” Jones wrote in an email to Charlottesville Tomorrow. “The Committee does not choose the complaints filed with the UJC and while most cases are historically referred to the UJC by Student Affairs staff (usually through PACE), the Committee retains its own decision-making capabilities in line with our By-Laws and Constitution.”
All the students were offered an informal resolution opportunity, which takes the form of a one-on-one discussion between the student and a PACE official during which they go over the incident and the student’s decision-making process. According to Bonner’s letter, some unspecified number of students took the deal. Coy would not say how many. Most of the involved students are unidentified and UVA can’t reveal their information, he said.
I feel more betrayed by my school than a graduate who feels happy to represent my school.
—Cady de la Cruz, one of eleven students who were arrested
It’s also unclear whether agreeing to the informal route had released them from facing a UJC trial already — in some cases, informal route might not be considered enough.
“Agreeing to these talks doesn’t guarantee avoiding the trial. Students who successfully complete informal disciplinary resolution no longer face UJC charges,” said Coy. “It is customary for Student Affairs to meet individually with students and to pursue informal resolution where appropriate. While some reports of misconduct do result in direct referral for formal resolution, such resolution is also always available to students who do not agree to an informal process.”
De la Cruz said some students declined the offer after learning that they would be separated for one-on-one talks. Their own offer for a collective meeting was rejected, according to an email sent by de la Cruz to the administration and seen by Charlottesville Tomorrow.
“The incident on May 4th was a collective experience. Isolating individual students in this process ignores the shared context and impact on the entire group. Together, our physical and mental health was violated by the university’s actions. Together, we wish to heal,” the students’ email response seen by Charlottesville Tomorrow read.
De la Cruz also expressed concern that having these one-on-one conversations with the administration could be incriminating, not only for their case with the Commonwealth but also for the UJC if the administration decides that the informal resolution wasn’t enough.
She said she received an offer from UJC to expedite the process to have a resolution before graduation, but between UVA’s push for an alternative route and the fact that spring semester classes were already over, the offer fell through.
“I feel more betrayed by my school than a graduate who feels happy to represent my school,” she said. “I do wish I could have spent the graduation weekend partying with my friends and happily reminiscing over the past four years, but instead, it felt like I was doing damage control. I was trying to put on a happy face for my family and just get through it.”
