Michigan State University Police Lieutenant Kimberly Parviainen gives the third and final trespassing warning to the Hurriya Coalition and MSU Sunrise at the Hannah Administration Building in East Lansing, Michigan on April 11, 2025. 19 protestors were arrested after multiple warnings from the police.
19 protesters were arrested at the Hannah Administration Building Thursday night after refusing to leave, following several police warnings.
The protesters — most of whom were students — were issued a 30-day misdemeanor trespassing citation, according to Michigan State University Police Chief Mike Yankowski.
This marks the second time pro-Palestine protesters have been arrested for refusing to leave the administration building, as five students were arrested for the same action in October.
The arrests came after a day of protest by the Hurriya Coalition at the administration building, which coincided with a planned meeting between students and university leadership.
Environmental studies sophomore Cal Kohn, Hurriya’s Alliance representative, said in addition to protesting MSU’s investment in Israel and urging for divestment — a debate that's been ongoing for over a year — students were also protesting the Department of State's recent revocation of some international students’ visas, including those belonging to some students at MSU. (President Kevin Guskiewicz pushed back on the revocations in a campus letter sent Thursday.)
"We want protections for international students and migrants," Kohn said. "Our main thing is that we will continue to disrupt until the board puts divestment back on the table or they meet any of our demands. The issues being given to us by the Trump administration and other powers that work here are something that we’re all fighting against and we’re here to protect our international students and scholars."
An hour into the protest, 10 representatives from the Hurriya Coalition went to their meeting with Guskiewicz and members of the Board of Trustees with a list of demands:
One of the students who attended the meeting was David Hogan, who later described university leadership as unresponsive and the meeting overall as unproductive.
"We went in and we were upfront," Hogan said. "We said there's an occupation that we will be carrying out, and the first thing we were met with was Trustee (Dennis) Denno saying it feels that we've come into this meeting and put a gun to their head."
Hogan said university officials referred the group to MSU's new presidentially appointed Investment Advisory Committee. The committee's recommendations will get passed on to Guskiewicz, who will then decide whether to pass them on to the board to vote on.
During the meeting, Hogan said the university reiterated that MSU is not working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). (MSU has previously said it will not assist ICE, with Yankowski telling The State News in February that the only instance in which campus police would assist federal agents is to execute a criminal arrest warrant on campus, which they are legally obligated to cooperate with.)
On the topic of a MENA studies institute, Hogan said university officials said the work falls on the faculty to prove there is interest and to recruit more faculty members to teach the classes, and that they weren't prepared to put aside funding or grant institutional help to create the program.
A university spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.
After the meeting concluded, the representatives returned to the first floor and informed protesters that the board did not make any concessions on divestment, causing an eruption of chants.
The protesters then occupied the lobby, continuing with chanting and singing as they received warnings of potential arrests. At that point, some protesters left the building to wait outside while others chose to stay.
The 19 protesters stood in a line singing as they were arrested one-by-one by MSU Police; students outside the building sang and chanted in unison. Once the group was taken into custody, remaining protestors continued their demonstrations outside the building.
Yankowski said there was no use of force in the arrests.
"I will say, other than the fact that they failed to comply with leaving the property, there was no use of force used," Yankowski said. "Everyone was compliant. They were handcuffed. There was no resistance, and it was just a matter of processing those individuals to get them their citations and to understand what the process is throughout that with 19 people it just takes a little time to do that."
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At around 9:35 p.m., the protesters were released from police custody.
One of those students was social relations and policy senior Eli Folts, who was also one of the students arrested in October.
"They had us lined up sitting down with zip ties and we were just waiting for them to write up the tickets," Folts said. "It would be nice if we could stay in there and try to get movement with the board, but I'm also not surprised that they did a mass arrest of students."
