Amid controversy, Cook County prosecutors drop charges against students accused of distributing fake Daily Northwestern page

CHICAGO — Cook County prosecutors on Wednesday dropped charges against two Northwestern students amid controversy over the decision to pursue a criminal case against them for allegedly circulating a fake page of the student newspaper to protest the school stance on the crisis in Gaza and Israel.

The charging decision, as well as the newspaper’s parent company’s pursuit of a complaint, attracted harsh criticism from students, professors and community members, who blasted the move as an example of over-policing of Black students and an effort to silence pro-Palestinian voices that disproportionately affect people of color.

In a statement, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office said that in misdemeanor cases, police departments can bypass prosecutors and directly file charges.

“In misdemeanor cases, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office … does not review or approve the charges prior to filing in any instance,” the office said. State’s Attorney Kim Foxx had declined to address the situation earlier this week.

The men, 20 and 22, were charged in December with theft of advertising services, a class A misdemeanor, according to Cook County court records. They were cited, but the charges were still pending as of Tuesday. Advocates pointed out that criminal charges can follow people for the rest of their lives.

“These are college students that were engaging in a political protest, one might even describe it as a stunt to make a political point,” Ed Yohnka, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union Illinois, told the Tribune Monday. “No one was meaningfully harmed as a result of this.”

The state’s attorney’s office said it “thoroughly reviewed the circumstances” and engaged in discussions with Northwestern and the newspaper provider. As a result of the review, the office decided to dismiss the charges.

“Our criminal justice system should only be utilized when there is no other recourse for accountability,” the office said in a statement. “Northwestern University and campus police are fully equipped to hold the involved individuals accountable, ensuring that such matters are handled in a manner that is both appropriate to the educational context and respectful of students’ rights.”

The charges stemmed from a parody front page of the Daily Northwestern, which was attached to real editions of the paper and placed around campus.

On Oct. 25, students on campus could find a single-page flyer that looked similar to the popular student-run newspaper with the headline “Northwestern complicit in genocide of Palestinians” printed across its lower third.

A court filing accused the two men of attaching “an unauthorized replica of the Daily Northwestern Newspaper” to a previously distributed edition and placing copies in the newspaper stand.

The charges say they did so “without a contractual agreement between the publisher and an advertiser.”

In a statement on Monday, Students Publishing Company, parent company of The Daily Northwestern, said it reported the fake front page to campus police, which resulted in charges filed by the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.

The next day, it released another statement that said it hired legal counsel to “work on our behalf with the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office to pursue a resolution to this matter that results in nothing punitive or permanent.”

In that statement, the publishing company elaborated on the events that led up to the charges, saying it contacted Northwestern police with the intent of protecting student journalists.

“This co-opting of the work of our student journalists and the potential damage to the reputation of the paper built upon more than a century of hard work was the problem,” the statement said. “To us, it seemed no different from someone hacking into our website to post their own content and replace ours.”

When police identified two people who may have been involved, the publishing company said it signed complaints. In the statement, the board of directors said they “didn’t understand how these complaints started a process that we could no longer control.”

“We have been listening to our fellow community members, and they have been heard,” the statement read. “We understand and recognize why we need to take action.”

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