hris Walker/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
Two students at Northwestern University are facing up to a year in prison for distributing a parody front page attached to the school’s newspaper that criticized the university’s response to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
The faux “Northwestern Daily” paper’s front page featured the headline “Northwestern complicit in genocide of Palestinians,” along with invented quotes from school officials, a false report about a leaflet drop telling students who lived above a certain street to evacuate their homes, and a fake ad for a “Birthright Israel” trip with the slogan, “One man’s home is another man’s former home!”
The students face charges for theft of advertising services, a Class A misdemeanor specific to Illinois and California that was originally used to prevent the Ku Klux Klan from distributing materials in their daily papers, according to The Intercept. The charges carry a potential sentence of up to a year in prison, and a $2,500 fine.