Nearly three months after Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel dropped all criminal charges against seven protesters arrested for their involvement in the University of Michigan Gaza solidarity encampment, the University has issued formal conduct complaints against 11 student protesters. The cases, which are being handled by the Office of Student Conflict Resolution, are the third round of OSCR complaints involving protests tied to the ongoing war in Gaza and student demands for University divestment.
The complaints stem from four demonstrations: the May 2024 police removal of the Gaza solidarity encampment on the Diag, a May 2024 demonstration outside the University of Michigan Museum of Art where the Board of Regents gathered for a gala, a July 2024 protest at a Division of Public Safety and Security panel for incoming students and an October 2024 walkout.
The University has not publicly released the number of students charged in each case or the nature of the violations alleged. However, multiple students — U-M alum Eaman Ali; Rackham student Kathleen Brown, former U-M Graduate Employees’ Organization vice president; and an undergraduate student who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, who we will refer to as John — confirmed to The Michigan Daily that they are facing OSCR hearings this month.
The allegations
According to documents reviewed by The Daily, John — who has previously gone through the OSCR process twice — is accused of refusing to leave the area surrounding the UMMA on May 3, allegedly obstructing public safety operations by encircling police officers. John is also accused of entering the Power Center for the Performing Arts orientation event under false pretenses in July and leading a prolonged protest chant onstage.
In an interview with The Daily, John described how previous efforts at restorative justice with the University did not prevent this third round of charges.
“In March, I met with several high profile members of the University and, essentially, the point of that meeting was to go forward on a restorative justice pathway for me to not get ‘OSCRed’ again,” John said. “I participated in those meetings in good faith. The point of restorative justice is to be learning points for the future. Now I am being sort of retroactively punished for events that happened before that.”
For Ali, OSCR alleges as written in an email sent to her by OSCR Director Erik Wessel that she failed to comply with police orders, physically obstructed officers and engaged in a physical altercation at the UMMA and October protests. Ali had previously been sanctioned by U-M Human Resources in April, losing her campus job and being permanently barred from future employment at the University.
“It is alleged that you failed to comply with repeated lawful requests to leave the area surrounding the University of Michigan Museum of Art (“UMMA”) as police officers attempted to secure the entry and exit of several event attendees, then obstructed and disrupted public-safety activities of the University by encircling police officers attempting to disperse a crowd, engaging in a physical altercation with police officers and others, and impeding attempts by police officers to clear a path as they tried to leave the area upon the event’s conclusion,” Wessel wrote.
Concerns about due process and policy shifts
Formal notices of complaint were issued more than six months after the relevant protests. According to the Statement of Student Rights and Responsibilities, conduct complaints must be submitted within six months unless the resolution coordinator deems a late submission “reasonable.”
In letters to the students, Wessel wrote the delays stemmed from inadequate information.
“While the Statement requires complaints to be submitted within six months of the incident occurring, the Resolution Coordinator may waive the six-month limitation when a late submission is reasonable,” Wessel wrote. “In this matter, I have deemed the late submission of the complaint reasonable given that the information was not available to OSCR until recently.”
In Ali’s intake meeting, recorded by The Daily, Donovan Golich, the University’s newly hired program manager for formal conflict resolution, confirmed the delay.
“I got this info in about April for the UMMA incident to be certain and it came from the University of Michigan Police Department,” Golich said. “In some cases, I needed more info so I requested body cam footage. I requested the police to talk to me about the incident more; in some, even the police report was enough to move forward.”
In an interview with The Daily, Brown said she was asked to provide quick-turnaround availability, which has undermined her ability to prepare a proper defense.
“I had my intake on July 16 and I’m told that my hearing is going to be on July 28, and that’s just no time at all,” Brown said. “They’ve had 14 months and now they’re pushing me through this in one month and for me to prepare my case in a week, how am I able to effectively defend myself?”
Ali told The Daily she was also given little time to prepare for hearings scheduled over the summer, and expressed her belief that it was in an effort to bypass due process.
“The entire process has been so rushed,” Ali said. “Many of us haven’t been given nearly enough time to FOIA police reports or police body camera footage that would be relevant to our case that Donovan Golich has had complete open access to. It’s very clear OSCR is trying to rush this along in (an) attempt to disempower the respondents as much as they can from demanding due process.”
OSCR restructuring
Multiple students emphasized that OSCR’s approach has changed in recent months after a July 2024 Regents meeting, especially with the University now formally acting as a complainant in these hearings.
Ali said she opposed the University’s new ability to directly prosecute students through OSCR.
“Historically, OSCR has been mediating issues and conflicts between students, not between students and the University,” Ali said. “It’s not clear who the University (is). Is it the students? Is it the staff? Is it the faculty? Or is it the Regents?”
John said their intake experience was procedurally inappropriate.
“Donovan Golich is both the complainant and the person facilitating the meetings,” John said. “Per the SSRR, the resolution coordinator is supposed to facilitate the intake meetings, not the complainant. It’s such a significant perversion of justice here and a complete violation of the University’s rules.”
The conduct cases come as OSCR is about to undergo a significant structural shift. An OSCR student staff member, who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, told The Daily in an interview that in the next few months, the office will split into two branches — a restorative justice office and a formal conflict resolution office — and will be housed under a new umbrella unit called Student Resolution Resources or Office of Student Accountability.
“This new OSA office is going to handle disciplinary cases, so things related to the Statement of Civil Rights and Responsibilities, if there’s any violations of that,” the staff member said. “This new office is going to be punitive and the old OSCR office is going to remain sort of what it was supposed to be — restorative.”
The staff member also said many OSCR staffers feel disillusioned.
“A lot of staff members are frustrated because when they entered this work, they thought it would be rooted in restorative justice,” the staff member said. “But this new office is starting to feel like … the ‘principal’s office,’ where you go there to get in trouble.”
In addition, Golich said during the intake meeting he has been serving as an internal University investigator. Brown said she believes this new structure reflects an expansion of surveillance and control.
“The University of Michigan Police working together with this new office and this new student investigator means that there’s a huge expansion of policing that’s taking place on campus because there are dedicated personnel who are paid to look through UMPD reports to find you and to punish you,” Brown said.
Claims of political retaliation
While much of the current OSCR activity centers on pro-Palestine protests, Golich said in Ali’s intake meeting that OSCR’s decisions are not guided by political or cultural affiliations, including his own.
“Geopolitical conflicts don’t sway how I write my reports,” Golich said. “That’s not to say I don’t have my own personal views, of course. I’m Lebanese, my mother is Muslim, I grew up in Dearborn. I don’t mind telling you guys all that because, guess what, it is very central to my identity and this job is hard because of that… I handle a lot of very tense conflicts involving a number of issues. And the end of the day, at most, the fact that they were at a protest is in the abstract.”
Brown said she disagreed and believed the charges to be punishment for political dissent.
“This is just a politicized charge because they want to punish us,” Brown said. “It’s not a reflection of justice, especially when we have the genocide continuing on in Gaza, unevaded in this really final stage of mass starvation — to have the University doing this right now is just so offensive.”
These charges occur as civil rights litigation is ongoing against the Regents; former University President Santa Ono; Wessel; Martino Harmon, Vice President for Student Life; and others. The case, brought by the Sugar Law Center for Economic & Social Justice, alleges U-M officials used the student conduct process to retaliate against pro-Palestine activists.
In an email to The Daily, University spokesperson Kay Jarvis wrote the OSCR proceedings were reasonable under the circumstances.
“Protests are welcome at the University of Michigan, so long as those protests do not infringe on the rights of others, disrupt university operations or threaten the safety of the community,” Jarvis wrote. “The university has been clear that we will enforce our policies related to protests and expressive activity, and that we will hold individuals accountable for their actions in order to ensure a safe and inclusive environment for all.”
Jarvis added that the University is considering broader changes to their investigative processes.
“With the new federal anti-hazing law, the Stop Campus Hazing Act, there is a need for a more robust investigation capacity for this and other needs,” Jarvis wrote. “The university continues to explore administrative models that will support this work while maintaining OSCR’s role serving the community through its well-respected restorative justice approach to conflict resolution.”
Senior News Editor Emma Spring can be reached at sprinemm@umich.edu.
