Stony Brook University sued over police response to pro-Palestine protest

Stony Brook University is stonewalling efforts to obtain internal documents related to the pro-Palestine protests that rocked the campus last year, resulting in the arrest of 29 students and faculty, according to a lawsuit filed by one of the protesters.

Ella Engel-Snow, who graduated in May with a master’s degree in social work, said she has been filing FOIL, or Freedom of Information Law, requests since January and has not received any documents from the university even though state law requires the school to release them.

Engel-Snow is "seeking records encompassing all legal and business correspondence from and to all SBU Police Command Staff" to shed light on how and why 150 Suffolk police and New York state troopers were ordered to the campus to arrest the protesters during a demonstration in May 2024, according to the lawsuit.

“I was appalled by the administration’s suppression of student activism,” Engel-Snow said in a statement. “We have a right to this information. … What kind of example is university leadership setting when they threaten students and at the same time disregard the law?”

Stony Brook University responded in a statement that it “remains committed to maintaining a safe, inclusive and respectful environment for all students, faculty and staff. We do not comment on pending legal matters.”

Engel-Snow said she filed the lawsuit on behalf of SUNY BDS, a statewide group of students, staff, faculty, alumni and community members at 64 SUNY campuses who are critical of what they believe is Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. The group is fighting to get the schools to cut ties with Israel.

Stony Brook University has typically impeded Engel-Snow’s requests for information by responding that it needed more time due to staff shortages. Then weeks later, university officials would give a similar message when the next promised deadline arrived, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in state Supreme Court in Suffolk County.

“To date the petitioner has not received any documents or further information regarding the FOIL requests,” the lawsuit states.

SBU encampment

The pro-Palestine protest at the heart of the lawsuit was among dozens of demonstrations that broke out on college campuses around the country in spring 2024. Participants were protesting Israel’s counter-offensive in Gaza following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 250 taken hostage. Tens of thousands of people were killed in Gaza.

Students at various colleges, including Columbia University, set up tent encampments that they occupied around the clock to try to pressure the institutions to cut research, educational or financial ties with Israel.

Shortly after midnight on May 2, 2024, scores of police descended on the encampment at Stony Brook and arrested the demonstrators. Stony Brook officials said at the time they had given the protesters an 11 p.m. deadline to remove the encampment.

Engel-Snow said in a statement that police, acting with no warrant, confiscated and kept for more than a week as "evidence" more than a dozen cellphones belonging to the protesters.

Stony Brook officials said at the time that "no evidence that is seized is searched without the appropriate steps, including the application for and receipt of a search warrant where applicable.”

After the arrests, Maurie McInnis, Stony Brook’s then-president, sent a letter to the campus community defending the decision. “It was a complicated situation, rooted in an emotionally charged national context, with no clear answers,” she wrote. “No president wants to have to contemplate arresting students. And we did everything we could to avoid that.”

Disorderly conduct charges filed against the protesters were eventually dropped by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.

“The university sent 150 police and state troopers to the encampment, which was kind of unbelievable. I mean, I've never seen anything like that before,” Engel-Snow said in an interview. “They created chaos where there was not chaos.”

She said she filed the lawsuit after months of getting “stonewalled” by the university. “I felt that I was left with no other choice.”

Abena Asare, an associate professor in Stony Brook’s Africana Studies department who was also arrested, said she was “glad to see students and alumni seeking accountability for this issue.”

She said too has had FOIL requests “ignored” by the university.

“We are a state university, we must follow state and federal law,” she said. “Freedom of information is a crucial part of that.”