The leaflet was prompted by a scheduled commencement address by Elias A. Zerhouni, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Gibson and Pollock stood on one side of the entry to Killian Court, Nguyen and Smith on the other. "We weren't chanting or even protesting the speaker," Smith said. "People just took our flyers if they were interested."

Fifteen minutes after they arrived, Suzanne Nguyen says, “MIT police approached both of us and told us we had to leave, claiming that we were blocking the way and the line had to move along.… It was unclear to me where I was supposed to move, since we were not blocking anyone's way or creating an obstruction.

“Roughly two minutes after having moved to our new spot the police again approached us. This time it was clear they were going after Aimee specifically and even though both of us were doing the same thing, peacefully handing out flyers and asking them why we had to leave. They just cuffed her and started carting her off. Neither Aimee nor I were yelling or acting in a violent manner.”

The police report paints a very different picture, one of ‘protesters’ and obstruction. “The protesters were voicing political opinions to the guests trying to enter and thus causing public inconvenience to the guests.” That report goes on to claim that Smith was “yelling and ranting…,” and that they “had no choice” but to arrest her.

Smith says that just before she was seized,"the cops pushed up against me," making it almost impossible for her to move away. She admits that she called the officers some unflattering names as they were taking her away in handcuffs.

Gibson and Pollock could not see what was happening to Nguyen and Smith because there was such a lot of space and people between the two pairs.

“Then the cops came a third time,” recalls Anne Pollock, “and said they had arrested one of our friends, the other had left, and it was our choice which we wanted. They said it would ruin our lives if we got arrested, because it would go on our record. They said not to distribute anywhere, not on Mem or Mass Ave or anywhere on campus.”

Aimee Smith was charged with disorderly conduct and disrupting a school assembly. At Cambridge police headquarters an officer saw that she had sustained minor lacerations from the MIT handcuffs, and gave her bandaids.

At her arraignment, Smith was offered a deal: charges would be dropped if she paid court costs. Smith indignantly rejected the idea that court costs might be "the price of exercising first amendment rights." Defense attorney Daniel Beck told the court that his client insisted on a formal apology from MIT. The court set a date of July 7 for a pretrial hearing.

Julia Steinberger of MIT Social Justice Cooperative condemned the harassment of the leafletters as a "continuation of the MIT administration turning Commencement into a super-controlled policed event rather than a celebration where everyone in the MIT community is welcome."

Community groups appeared at every MIT commencement for fifteen years during the 1970s and 1980s, and not only handed out flyers but chanted, yelled and picketed with signs, balloons and puppets on the public sidewalk along Memorial Drive.

During those years the Simplex Steering Committee led opposition to MIT’s huge University Park development in Cambridgeport. Former Simplex leader Bill Cavellini told me that no one had ever been arrested on the sidewalk or told to leave during all those years.

The SJC flyer which caused the MIT police such consternation criticized the NIH funding of a "bioweapons lab that will bring pathogens like Ebola, smallpox, and anthrax into a densely populated Boston neighborhood.… NIH prioritizes funding for genomics research with no obvious health benefits over taking steps toward preventative and environmental health, which have the greatest impact on all of us."

The incident has elicited protests to the MIT administration from students, faculty, and activists in the community. On Friday, June 11, a delegation from the group which sponsored the flyers met President Vest in his office, so far without tangible results.