Four students arrested for disrupting an Ohio University student senate meeting rejected a plea bargain and maintained their pleas of “not guilty.”

The students — Jonah Yulish, Maxwell Peltz, Rebecca Sebo and Gabriel Sirkin — appeared in Athens County Municipal Court on Wednesday for a pretrial hearing, according to The Post, OU’s student newspaper.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

The students had been arrested on September 10th for staging a protest of senate president Megan Marzec’s “blood bucket challenge” video calling for the university to divest from companies doing business in Israel. Their protest ended when the Ohio University Police Department arrested the students.

Marzec was in attendance at the hearing, and called the vote on whether to call in campus police to arrest the protesters.

The students were offered the chance to each plead guilty to a minor misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct and pay a $100, but all refused, according to The Post. The students have been charged with disturbing a lawful meeting, a fourth-degree misdemeanor charge. If convicted, they could face a maximum penalty of 30 days in jail and a $250 fine.

The president of Hillel, the campus Jewish network, Eric Fingerhut, a former Ohio congressman has called on the university to apologize for the arrests.

The trial is scheduled to take place on February 17 and is expected to take two days.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$90 $180

$360

Other amount