Protests against ICE have spread to the Bay. We wanted to hear directly from Bay Area residents who turned out in East Oakland to support the surging movement in Minneapolis.
“If they are willing to sacrifice everything on the line to defend someone far away on the other side of the world…They wanted to put everything on the line and chose to go to trial instead of saying they are guilty." (Stephanie Reist / Bay Area Current)
After a three-week trial closely watched by their dozens of supporters, five Stanford students are currently awaiting the jury’s verdict on the state’s charges of felony conspiracy to trespass and felony vandalism — the harshest criminal charges in the nation brought against students protesting Israel’s genocide against Gaza. If found guilty, the students could face up to three years in prison for their alleged roles in a June 5, 2024, sit-in at the university’s president’s office to demand the university divest from Israel, disclose its 2022 investments, and offer amnesty to students that had participated in the pro-Palestinian encampment. Stanford is also seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in restitution for damages they claim resulted from the student action. Closing arguments by the prosecution, Deputy District Attorney Robert Baker, and the five-person defense team representing the students spanned Thursday, January 29 and Friday, January 30.
Though 12 students were initially charged, only five — Germán González, Maya Burke, Taylor McCann, Amy Jing Zhai and Hunter Taylor-Black — decided to proceed with the jury trial that began on January 9. The others — Cameron Michael Pennington, Kaiden Wang, Eliana Lindsay Fuchs, Gretchen Rose Giumarin, Isabella Terrazas, Zoe Georgia Edelman — accepted various pre-trial offers from the District Attorney (DA) and one, John Richardson, was also subpoenaed as a witness by the DA.
Deputy DA Baker began his closing arguments with a refrain that the DA office has repeated since District Attorney Jeff Rosen first brought the charges against the students in April 2025: “Dissent is American but vandalism is a crime.” Much of Baker’s argument hinged on distinguishing between what the DA claims was illegal activity and protected speech like sit-ins. “Make no mistake, this was not a sit-in. This wasn’t Stanford students going into an open building and protesting. This was an occupation.” Though Rosen initially held a press conference of the indictment in April 2025, Rosen later handed the case over to Baker.
Baker contended that by entering the president’s office, students had “fucked up” the campus protest movement for everyone. The university dismantled the second pro-Palestinian encampment hours after students were initially arrested, though a previous 120 day-long encampment that began on October 20, 2023 had also been dismantled following negotiations between the university and student organizers.
“The school gave them all kinds of trouble,” said Nancy Zhou, a supporter who had accompanied the students since the first encampment. “They fixed things to comply with safety that the school used as an excuse… The university just wanted to use any excuse to take it down.”Though he seemingly defended the encampment and the right to free speech in U.S. — even stating that “whats so great and wonderful about this case is that they weren’t sent to some gulag or summarily executed” — Deputy DA Baker told jurors that the case was not about the war in Gaza, allegations of genocide, or Stanford’s investments in Israel, but instead about whether the defendants intended to unlawfully occupy the building and were liable for subsequent vandalism. DA Baker, in other words, has tried to put distance between politics and the students. “Genocide is not in the jury instructions” he has said. In December 2025 pre-trial motions to determine the agreed upon rules of the proceeding, the DA office had even attempted to ban the use of the term “genocide.”Pointing to Signal chats and planning documents, the prosecutor has reframed the protest as an unlawful occupation. Baker emphasized the evidence of barricaded doors, broken windows, and damage to building fixtures to the jurors, attempting to paint the students as highly organized trespassers seeking to extort the university by remaining indefinitely in Building 10 until their demands were met.
The students’ defense attorneys disputed that characterization, stating that the defendants intended to remain only briefly, expected to be asked to leave, and communicated a willingness to exit peacefully to police. They argued that students erected barricades out of fear of police violence, with one defendant, Taylor-Black even wearing a helmet during the action due to a prior head injury. They again showed jurors a clip of body-worn footage from a police officer telling another that the students were “willing to come out one at a time.” Despite these efforts, the police broke through windows and handcuffed the students. The defense attorneys also pointed jurors to additional body-worn camera footage in which a police officer is heard calling one of the arrested students a “fucking bitch.” The cop then states that any injuries are the “price of doing business” during the arrest.
Defense counsel framed the sit-in as a performance, citing evidence from the students’ planning documents, and arguing the protest was intended to engage in dialogue with Stanford after months of unsuccessful demonstrations, petitions, and a student referendum in which more than 75% of participating students voted to place divestment on the agenda for discussion. Pointing to Stanford’s own investment policies, the defense council argued the students’ demands were neither radical nor unprecedented. Under guidelines adopted by the university’s Board of Trustees, Stanford permits divestment from companies engaged in what it describes as “abhorrent and ethically unjustifiable” conduct, including genocide and apartheid. None of this is new. Campus organizing and sustained student protests have a historic role in pressuring Stanford University to divest, including efforts to divest in coal in 2014 and earlier actions related to Sudan and apartheid South Africa.
For the students’ many supporters, the State’s case against the students has been controversial from the start, particularly the severity of the charges. The possibility of felony convictions has reshaped how students think about direct action. “These kids went into the president’s office for an hour and a half,” a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) Stanford supporter, who asked to remain anonymous, said. “Now they are facing three years in jail. That will be very effective in shutting people up.”
“These kids went into the president’s office for an hour and a half. Now they are facing three years in jail. That will be very effective in shutting people up.”
Many have also questioned the timing of the indictments nearly a year after the student action and several months after the university’s own disciplinary proceedings against the students — which included a two-quarter suspension immediately following the June 2024 initial arrest. These charges arrived alongside unprecedented actions from both the U.S. government and campus administrations to clamp down on pro-Palestinian organizers. Stanford’s “time, place, and manner” policy adopted in 2024 limits demonstrations to a single designated campus location within a one hour window per day. The case, and subsequent free speech policies, risk becoming normalized for incoming students who did not witness earlier, broader traditions of campus protest.
Supporters have questioned why DA Rosen pushed felony charges almost one year after the initial 2024 sit-in. “It took them [Stanford] a little time to come up with this bright idea to give the dirty work to Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen” speculated Lotus Yee Fong, another supporter of the students since their first encampment. By backing the DA’s felony case with a restitution claim — timed amid heightened national scrutiny of campus activism in 2025 — Stanford could avoid appearing as the institution directly pressing charges. Stanford’s demanded restitution of roughly $329,000 clearly exceeds documented repair estimates of a few thousand dollars, as noted by the defense team in closing arguments.
For Zhou, supporting the students from their first encampment through the trial has been inspiring. “If they are willing to sacrifice everything on the line to defend someone far away on the other side of the world, based on humanity, based on international law…They wanted to put everything on the line and chose to go to trial instead of saying they are guilty. They insisted they are innocent and they want to defend it. They are so brave. They are representing the future and are giving us hope.”
Jury deliberations will begin February 2, 2026.
Disclosure: Stephanie Reist, a lecturer at Stanford, taught Germán González in Winter 2023 in a section of the course “Citizenship in the 21st Century,” as part of Stanford’s first-year requirement. Readings by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X on civil disobedience were part of the curriculum shared across all sections.
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Stephanie Reist has a PhD in Latin American Cultural Studies and teaches undergraduate expository writing. Her writing focuses on higher ed and culture in the Bay and beyond.
Protests against ICE have spread to the Bay. We wanted to hear directly from Bay Area residents who turned out in East Oakland to support the surging movement in Minneapolis.
