Stanford Student Journalist Won’t Face Criminal Charges for Coverage of Student Protests

A Stanford University student journalist who entered a campus building last summer while covering a student protest in support of Palestinians during the war between Israel and Hamas will not be criminally charged, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office said on March 6.

The decision comes about six weeks after the university said it had concluded an investigation into its own possible disciplinary action against the reporter, Dilan Gohill, whose arrest had been denounced by First Amendment groups, The Stanford Daily student news outlet, and an alumni group.

Gohill said in a statement shared by the law firm representing him that he was glad to be cleared of any wrongdoing but said that the experience “had a chilling effect on a free press.”

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“No journalist should ever have to endure a nine-month-long threat to their academic, social, and professional future for simply doing their job. The University, their Department of Public Safety, and the elected District Attorney all allowed the possibility of multiple felonies to hang over my head,” Gohill said.

Despite dropping the pursuit of disciplinary action in late January, the university’s president declined to publicly withdraw his endorsement of criminal charges when urged to do so by free press advocates and alumni in the legal and journalism fields.

A university spokesperson said Stanford respected the district attorney’s decision and reiterated the university’s stance that it had deferred to the District Attorney’s Office to make its own decision, which it does anyway.

Stanford had previously publicly supported Gohill’s prosecution. The university initially said that First Amendment protections did not apply to someone it accused of trespassing.

“We believe that the Daily reporter reporting from inside the building acted in violation of the law and University policies and fully support having him be criminally prosecuted and referred to Stanford’s Office of Community Standards along with the other students,” a public letter from the university said following the arrest.

“It is quite clear that the Daily reporter had no First Amendment or other legal right to be barricaded inside the president’s office,” the statement said.

After nine months, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen ultimately disagreed.

“This Office supports a free press and recognizes that the law gives reporters latitude to do their jobs in keeping the public informed. We have no evidence that this student did anything other than cover this event as a journalist,” Rosen said in a press release.

Charges are still being considered for the protesters, according to the press release.

The protest took place at about 5:30 a.m. on June 5, 2024, the last day of classes for the university’s spring quarter, when 12 protesters broke into the university president’s office in Building 10, according to the university, the District Attorney’s Office and Gohill’s own reporting.

There are two stories from that day with his and other reporters’ bylines on the Stanford Daily’s website describing the protest as involving a group of about 50 protesters applying graffiti to the outside of the building while a smaller group entered the office and barricaded the door with bike locks, chains and ladders, and covered up security cameras.

They were demanding the university’s board of trustees consider a bill to divest the university’s endowment from investments supporting Israel, disclose the previous year’s investments, and stop pursuing disciplinary action against students who took part in previous protests against what has been described by the International Court of Justice as crimes against humanity, including “a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza.”

They were arrested when police broke into the office at about 7:15 a.m., according to the student newspaper, which is independent from the university.

The First Amendment Coalition, Student Press Law Center, and two dozen other organizations that advocate for freedom of press and First Amendment rights rejected the university’s conflation of Gohill’s entry while covering the protest to that of the protesters themselves.

They urged the district attorney to drop the pursuit of any criminal charges and denounced the university’s investigation into disciplinary charges.

In a statement following the university president’s confirmation to the organizations in January that Gohill, who is now a sophomore, would not face formal disciplinary action, Student Press Law Center senior counsel Mike Hiestand said the university should join them in urging prosecutors to drop consideration of criminal charges, which university president Jonathan Levin declined to do.

“It’s mind-boggling that the university took this long to acknowledge what should have been a simple decision,” Hiestand said.

“It’s shameful that a university seemingly committed to the ideals of free expression and a free press cannot be bothered to come to the aid of its own student facing potential felony charges for the act of reporting the news,” he said.

This article was written by Thomas Hughes for Bay City News.

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