Anti-War Activists Who Occupied UW’s Boeing-Funded Building Will Not Face Jail Time

The UW 33, a group of UW students and community members who occupied a campus building funded by war profiteer Boeing, will not go to trial, face jail time, or face any fines after they sign pretrial diversion agreements. While the agreement comes with stipulations,  the anti-war activists called this outcome a win for the protesters, for the broader movement for Palestinian liberation, and for their ongoing fight against political repression. 

On a Monday evening in May 2025, pro-Palestine student group SUPER UW occupied the new Interdisciplinary Engineering Building (IEB) on UW’s campus. To the students, this building was the physical manifestation of the university’s ties to war profiteering, ties students have long sought to sever. Boeing donated $10 million toward the construction of the IEB in 2022, the very company that manufactured more missiles and munitions for Israel between the years 2021-2023 than any other company. 

The group took over the building for several hours and renamed it Sha’ban Al-Dalou Building in honor of a 19 year-old software engineer who burned to death in his hospital bed after the Israeli military bombed Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital complex in Deir el-Balah.

Later that evening, UW sent in the UW Police Department (UWPD), the Seattle Police Department (SPD), and Washington State Patrol (WSP) to forcibly remove the protesters. SUPER UW claimed the cops “dragged and threw people down flights of stairs, threw furniture over people’s heads, and slammed people’s bodies into the ground,” all in all “caus[ing] multiple concussions, nerve damage, and other injuries.”

In addition to the brutalization, the cops arrested 33 people and the UW suspended 22 students, evicting those living in the dorms, barring those with UW jobs from returning to work, and banning the students and other community members from all three campuses, as The Burner previously reported. 

It would be almost a year before King County prosecutors charged the UW 33 with first-degree criminal trespassing. The King County Prosecutors (KCPAO) could not find sufficient evidence to file felony charges for the alleged $1 million of damage the UW claimed the students caused: “To prove a felony case, you have to identify the exact perpetrators of the damage — and even after months of tracking down investigative leads, that evidence wasn’t found,” KCPAO director of communications Casey McNerthney said. 

And now, the more than year-long legal rigmarole looks to be ending. On Tuesday afternoon, SUPER UW announced on Instagram that the UW 33 are each entering a Stipulated Order of Continuance (SOC). This is a pre-trial diversion agreement that means if they complete their required community service hours and do not violate the law again for a year, they won’t face trial, jail time, fines, and they will see their charges completely dismissed afterwards, SUPER UW said. 

McNerthney from KCPAO added that the defendant must also “stipulate to the accuracy of the police report” as part of the agreement. Doing so means the defendant agrees that the cops got the facts of the case correct and they can be used by the court as evidence without the officer having to testify. 

McNerthney told The Burner that if the defendants violate the SOC, then the Court could revoke it and then move to a Stipulated Bench trial where the court would review the police reports to determine if the defendant is guilty or not guilty. Regardless, even if the SOC is revoked or if the case was to proceed to trial, McNerthney said “it is unlikely that the Court would sentence a defendant to the maximum of 364 days in custody for a gross misdemeanor even if the State makes that recommendation to the Court.”

SUPER UW knows that the UW 33 protesters could still get in trouble if they don’t hold up their end of the SOC, so they asked supporters to keep an eye on the situation, just in case they need to do another call-a-thon or a mutual aid ask. 

For now, SUPER UW is calling it a win. 

“In a climate where Palestine organizing is being repressed on all scales, it is crucial to highlight our movement’s successes in fighting repression through collective defense, community support, and strong clear politics,” SUPER UW wrote.