UVM to pay students arrested for pot protest

BURLINGTON, Vt. – The University of Vermont has agreed to pay cash settlements to two students who claimed their First Amendment rights were violated after their arrests during last spring’s marijuana smoke-in on campus.

Thomas Wheeler and Nikolai Sears, whose claims were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, each received $7,500, Vermont ACLU officials announced Tuesday.

University officials declined to discuss the specifics of the case or why the university settled, but said the agreement was in the best interest of UVM.

“We maintain that we acted appropriately at the time,” said UVM spokesman Enrique Corredera. “Our goal then first and foremost was to ensure the safety of our students and to maintain law and order, and we believe we did that very effectively. As we move forward, we are determined to continue to pursue that goal, while at the same time, be mindful of the need to protect people’s free speech rights.”

Sears and Wheeler had been charged with disorderly conduct after the April 20 gathering of about 600 people at UVM’s Redstone campus. The so-called “420” ritual began at UVM in the mid-1990s in protest of marijuana laws.

University police arrested the two sophomores during the event for urging participants into a tightly knit circle and encouraging them to smoke marijuana.

The criminal charges against both students were dropped in June, and subsequent campus-based judicial hearings also found them not guilty of any violations related to the smoke-in, said Allen Gilbert, executive director of ACLU-Vermont.

“From the accounts we received, there appeared to be no grounds for an arrest,” Gilbert said of the April 20 citations. “They appeared to be exercising their right to peaceful assembly and protest.”

In their initial claim against UVM, Wheeler and Sears had each asked for $15,000 and a campuswide apology from UVM President Daniel Fogel. Wheeler, who had received a yearlong suspension in May for an unrelated noise violation, also requested that his suspension be lifted, claiming the punishment was leveled because of the April 20 incident.

The apology was not part of the final agreement, Wheeler said, but university officials did agree to limit his suspension to only one semester.