The Students for a Democratic Society held a press conference Thursday morning to share updates on Gabriela Juárez, the student who was arrested and sent to East Baton Rouge Parish Prison Wednesday afternoon after protesting at the school’s presidential search committee meeting.
Juárez was in attendance and shared details on her experience in custody and said her time at the LSUPD and EBR Prison was emotionally distressing. She said it was specifically because she is a transgender woman.
Juárez was released on bond around 1 a.m. Thursday with a court date on Jan. 5. She is not allowed to enter the LSU Foundation building or leave the state of Louisiana until her court date.
According to SDS, people across Louisiana and the country called into the prison demanding that Juárez’s charges be dropped. SDS is asking students to call the LSUPD to demand the charges for the other six student protesters who were arrested be dropped.
LSU has not yet followed up with any disciplinary action toward the students who were arrested and has not responded to a request to comment on if it intends to do so.
In an interview with the Reveille, Juárez said she was first placed in a holding cell alone where she overheard LSUPD officers talking about the six other students they had arrested.
Juárez alleges she heard the officers saying “we need to figure out what we are charging these kids with.”
Margo Wilson and Enola Guyer, two students who were also arrested but released shortly after, were held in an interview room together and alleged that they heard the officers say they were using ChatGPT and AI summaries to figure out what they would charge the students with.
“That leads us all to the belief that they really just grabbed everyone and then had to figure out last minute what they were charging,” Wilson said.
LSU told the Reveille Thursday that the protesters’ “arrests were processed according to law and LSUPD policy.”
Juárez was officially charged with resisting an officer and interfering with educational practice. She also said that LSUPD misgendered her multiple times. She said she gave her legal name but officers did not believe her at first. She alleged that the officers “were under the impression that [she] was a cisgender woman who was giving them a male name incorrectly.”
“After being referred to as ‘she’ and ‘her’ by police officers and being referred to as a female convictee, as soon as they had my legal name I could overhear the police in the room saying amongst themselves, ‘I do not view this person as a female but they insist that they be referred to as such,’” Juárez said.
Juárez thought she would be released like the other six students, but instead she was transported to the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison and told she would likely spend the night in jail. She went through central booking and said that while in the medical section of the prison, officers asked Juárez about her mental health and gender identity. At this point she confirmed that she is a transgender woman.
As part of the medical process she was told to strip naked to be searched. After, she was put in a T-shirt while a male officer and female higher up decided whether to put her in a holding cell with men or women. Juárez said the officer described her as “someone here who is bottom parts male but up top fully female” to another officer.
The officers put her into a female holding cell alone because they said they “‘didn’t want her to get taken advantage of,’” Juárez said.
Juárez said she never had access to a phone to call anyone.
Juárez fell asleep for about three hours and awoke to find that her bond was set for $1,000 and that it had been signed for, meaning she would be released shortly. She said she never had a bond hearing but later learned that a public defender on the outside coordinated the bond.
Juárez told the Reveille Thursday after the press conference that she had full confidence in the charges against her being dropped by the time of her court date.
“I also felt very strong in my conviction that I was doing something right and that I was participating in a struggle for something better,” Juárez said. “So that allowed me to feel a lot of peace with where I had ended up, even though, of course, it was scary and nerve wracking and degrading.”
Juárez told the Reveille that she felt that the police arrested her and sent her to prison as a means of intimidation because she is a “high-profile activist.”
“I believe that the police officers targeted us with force and did not go through the proper legal avenue or give any kind of actual order of arrest simply because they were outraged,” Juárez said.
SDS said it has no plans to stop protesting the search committee until it fulfills their three demands to make the selection process more inclusive of student opinion.
“It is the most important time to be using our voices directly and to not allow shows of force like this to scare us into submission,” Juárez said. “Because the fact of the matter is that they cannot and will not arrest all of us.”
Scott Ballard, the Board of Supervisors chair, said to the Reveille Thursday that he hopes the criminal charges are dropped against the students but that the university should take proper disciplinary action.
“She does need to be held accountable through the school process for that conduct,” Ballard said.
