A Georgetown student faces up to six months in federal prison for trespassing on a military base during a November protest in Georgia.
Dont’e Smith (CAS ‘08) was arrested in Fort Benning, Ga., after jumping a fence onto the grounds of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as the School of the Americas. Held in the county jail overnight, Smith returned to Georgetown following his release on $500 bail. He will return to Georgia at the end of January to stand trial, where he says he plans to plead guilty.
“I decided to cross the line a week before, when I was researching the SOA,” Smith said. “I knew I was facing months in a federal penitentiary.”
Smith obtained legal advice from SOA Watch, a group that works with School of the Americas protesters. He says he faces consequences ranging from federal probation and no jail time to 6 months of federal arrest and a $5,000 fine.
Smith had traveled to the base with a group of Georgetown students to join an annual protest against the base, which critics say plays a hand in training foreign soldiers who go on to commit human rights abuses. A number of protesters cross the line and are arrested annually, Smith said.
None of the other Georgetown protestors knew of Smith’s plans until the day before he was arrested. He later apologized in an e-mail for putting them in a difficult situation but he did not apolgize for the act.
“I chose civil disobedience as my own method of coping with the inhumanity of places such as the SOA that laud ‘security’ and American national ‘interests’ over … justice itself,” he wrote.
He would not, however, advocate other students taking the same action he took.
“There are different ways to express opposition,” he said. “For me, it was crossing the line, but it could be different for others.”
David Monaco, the Campus Ministry program coordinator who led the group to Fort Benning, indicated that Smith will receive no legal support from the university.
“Georgetown policy is that the university respects a student’s rights to express him or herself, but the university does not supply attorneys or bail for people who engage in that,” Monaco said.
Smith says he hopes his status as a student and his lack of funds will convince a judge to reduce his sentence.
“During the arraignment, the judge cut my bail from $1000 to $500, saying, and I quote, ‘because I like the way those Georgetown boys play basketball,’” he said.
The most difficult part of this experience, Smith says, has been his family’s reaction.
“They are very scared; they disagree with this decision,” he said. “I knew what I was facing, but I didn’t think how it would affect my family.”
