The Education Department announced on Monday that it had canceled student loans for more than 150,000 borrowers, bringing the tally of Americans whose loans were forgiven under President Biden to over five million. The Biden administration reached the milestone even though many of its more ambitious plans to overhaul the nation’s system for administering student debt faltered over the past two years, forcing the administration to slowly but steadily process applications for relief through established channels created by Congress. The latest cancellations were most likely the administration’s final round of relief. They covered borrowers who have worked in public service for at least 10 years, students who had applied after being defrauded or misled by their school, and some students with disabilities. With Monday’s authorization and 27 previous ones, the Biden administration has canceled more than $183 billion in outstanding student loans. “Since Day 1 of my administration, I promised to ensure higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity, and I’m proud to say we have forgiven more student loan debt than any other administration in history,” Mr. Biden said in a statement. Mr. Biden will leave office next week with many of his boldest ambitions for student debt reform stymied, after a wave of legal challenges brought by Republican attorneys general chipped away at plans that once envisioned student loan forgiveness for over 40 million people. After its initial strategy of canceling debt through emergency powers tied to the Covid-19 pandemic was rejected by the Supreme Court in 2023, the administration attempted a variety of other tacks, including waiving interest on loans that had piled up for several decades. Mr. Biden had also sought to sharply reduce the monthly payments that borrowers made on their loans with a generous new repayment plan, known as SAVE, that also qualified borrowers to have their full balances forgiven after making payments for a set period. But opposition to those tactics mounted as well, and legal challenges brought by Republican states led to repeated setbacks, with federal judges stalling most of the administration’s programs even as borrowers flocked to enroll in them.During a call with reporters on Monday, officials said they expected that the programs used to authorize the latest cancellations, including the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and borrower defense to repayment, would continue to be open to applicants into the next administration. But it was far from clear whether the Education Department would continue to administer those programs under the Trump administration. Both President-elect Donald J. Trump and the America First Policy Institute, where his pick for education secretary, Linda McMahon, has served as a chair, have been intensely critical of the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness policies. And while lawmakers would have to pass legislation to change or eliminate the programs in question, their implementation by the Education Department could be restricted or deprioritized as they were under Mr. Trump’s first education secretary, Betsy DeVos. In recent months, officials have instead turned to celebrating the more limited progress they made using programs like Public Service Loan Forgiveness to their full potential. After the program was enacted in 2007, bureaucratic obstacles and poor coordination made it almost impossible for borrowers to navigate. Just around 7,000 people had successfully applied for forgiveness under that law when Mr. Biden took office. “The system was broken,” Education Secretary Miguel A. Cardona told reporters on Monday. “And when these borrowers reached out for help, the previous administration showed little interest in fixing it.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York on Monday announced her intention to limit access to cellphones in schools for students in kindergarten through 12th grade as part of her latest push to address children’s reliance on the devices. In a statement, which provided no other details, the governor said she would include the legislation in her proposal for next fiscal year’s budget. She billed the initiative as a follow-up to one of her key achievements last year, the passage of legislation designed to protect young people from addictive algorithms on social media. She cited a Pew Research poll that showed 72 percent of high school teachers described students being distracted by cellphones as a “major problem.” “Young people succeed in the classroom when they’re learning and growing — not clicking and scrolling,” Governor Hochul said Monday. “My upcoming budget proposal will put forth a new statewide standard for distraction-free learning in schools across our state.” Speaking to high school and college students at Hudson Valley Community College on Monday, the governor acknowledged that restricting cellphone use might make her “very unpopular.” Los Angeles Unified became the largest school district in the United States to ban cellphones last year. Virginia, Ohio and Minnesota are among the states that have moved to crack down on the devices in schools. In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams backed away from a plan to ban cellphones in schools in August, saying the city wasn’t “there yet.” In September, New York State United Teachers, the state teachers’ union, called for a “bell-to-bell” policy that would restrict cellphone use from first period to dismissal. The union’s president, Melinda Person, has said that the union was working closely with the governor to craft a plan. But the idea has its detractors as well. Some New York parents who were students during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have expressed reservations about losing the ability to contact their children in an emergency. Principals have questioned who would foot the bill for equipment to collect phones. And some teachers have wondered how they would be expected to discipline students who broke the rules. In a statement on Monday, a spokeswoman for the United Federation of Teachers, New York City’s teachers’ union, said that the organization supported state and city restrictions on cellphones in public schools, as long as a number of conditions were met. The union said teachers should not be responsible for enforcing the restrictions; school districts should shoulder the cost instead of individual schools; enforcement should be consistent from student to student; and schools should have emergency contact lines set up for parents. Many of New York City’s more than 1,500 public schools already restrict cellphone use. Some middle schools require children to place their phones in cubbies along the walls of their classrooms. Many high schools hand out locked fabric pouches for phones that students carry in their bags throughout the school day. Brad Hoylman-Sigal, a state senator who represents a large swath of the West Side of Manhattan, introduced a bill last week that would prohibit students from accessing their phones on school property. He said he saw his bill as a starting point for a conversation in the State Senate. He said he hoped that the governor’s plan would include a way for students to safely and securely hand over their phones and then get them back at the end of the day. “As a parent of a 14-year-old daughter, I understand how phones are an obstacle in the learning environment,” Senator Hoylman-Sigal said. “At the same time, I appreciate that parents want their children to have phones when they’re on the subway or on a bus. So I hope the governor’s proposal embraces both of those needs.” Speaking at the community college on Monday, Governor Hochul described hearing from students who told her about how they struggled to put away their phones because they are feared they would “miss something.” “There’s so much pressure on all of you, and I’ve got to help you with that,” she told the students. “That’s my job.”

Sean Karaman, a freshman at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, hadn’t always paid close attention to his credit card spending. But after taking a personal finance course on campus last fall, he said, he is much more likely to pay as he goes. “I’ve become best friends with my debit card,” said Mr. Karaman, 21, who plays on the U.N.L.V. hockey team. More than two-thirds of states require high school students to take a personal finance class before graduation, according to the Council for Economic Education. Now, personal finance courses, offered mostly as electives, are sprouting up at public and private colleges nationwide and getting a boost from a new initiative by Stanford University. While some colleges have long offered personal finance classes, the new effort to develop and promote college-level personal finance instruction carries Stanford’s academic heft. “There really is a need among all students, and society as a whole, to learn more about personal finance,” said J. Daniel Chi, chairman of the finance department at U.N.LV.’s Lee Business School. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT Annamaria Lusardi, an economist and a financial literacy researcher who has directed the Stanford program since 2023, said people today were expected to shoulder more responsibility for their finances than in the past, when jobs came with fixed pensions rather than 401(k) plans that require workers to save and invest their own funds for retirement. “We have to manage our own money,” Dr. Lusardi said. “It’s too complex, to use common sense and rules of thumb.” Yet Americans have consistently shown low levels of financial literacy. On average, adults correctly answer only about half of 28 questions about concepts like earnings, savings, insurance and risk comprehension, according to an annual assessment of Americans’ working financial knowledge known as the P-Fin Index. The Stanford initiative aims to make personal finance education more accessible to more students, including first-generation college students and those from low-income families. In addition to holding an annual conference for educators, it collaborates with colleges and provides instructional materials and mentoring. It’s funded by a multimillion-dollar donation from Charles R. Schwab, the discount-brokerage pioneer, who is a Stanford alumnus; his wife, Helen; and the Charles R. Schwab Foundation for Financial Freedom, which supports financial literacy among young adults. More colleges have embraced the subject as research in the field has deepened, said John Y. Campbell, a Harvard economist who has taught a personal finance course for several years. It also helps to spark student’s interest in an economics major. “It turns out it’s a very good vehicle for teaching basic economics,” he said. The courses typically cover concepts like compound interest and the time value of money — the idea that a sum of money generally is worth more now than the same amount in the future, because of factors like inflation and the ability to invest — but details vary by institution. Because Harvard can offer generous financial aid to its students, Dr. Campbell said, they aren’t as concerned about educational debt as are some students at other colleges. Many Stanford graduates move on to careers in technology, so its introductory course covers topics like valuing stock options and the role of venture capital, said Michael Boskin, a Stanford economist who taught the course last year with Dr. Lusardi. The goal, he said, is to get students to understand how to think and reason their way through financial decisions. Dr. Boskin introduced the course with a colleague in 2020 after former students told him that they wished they had known more about evaluating pay and benefits packages when weighing job offers. Elisabeth Curtis, a senior lecturer in economics at Dartmouth, taught a personal finance course at its Hanover, N.H., campus for the first time last spring, to about two dozen students. Dr. Curtis said the course, which also explores the psychology of how and why people make decisions about money, was designed for students in non-finance majors. Terrance Odean, a finance professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, said 900 students had enrolled for the spring session of his introductory personal finance management course. It covers major financial decisions like choosing a career, spending vs. saving and making investments, as well as how overconfidence and “present bias” — the tendency to value immediate benefits over long-term rewards — can affect choices. Alexandrea Coe, 19, a sophomore at Berkeley majoring in rhetoric and conservation & resource studies, took the course in her first semester. “I was aware of a lot of the things we went over, but I really didn’t understand them,” she said. One lesson that resonated, she said, was that as a young person, “your greatest asset is time,” so it pays to start saving and investing early. Stanford’s course covers basics like borrowing and credit scores, and investing principles such as diversification, or managing risk by investing in different types of assets. Students analyze various scenarios, such as choosing between investments and citing the reasons for their choice, and discuss the impact of taxes, fees and inflation on investment returns. They also learn that financial decisions often involve trade-offs, Dr. Boskin said: Your comfort with financial risk may depend on whether members of your family rely on you, and when considering job offers, you may favor a flexible schedule over a higher salary. “How do you value these things?” Dr. Boskin said. Some have criticized the notion of financial literacy as a distraction from the need to make the American financial system more equitable. Dr. Odean at Berkeley said financial instruction wasn’t a panacea. “I don’t think that people are in financial distress because they didn’t take my course,” he said. “We’re teaching them how to navigate the rules as they currently are.” Harvard’s course aims to help even wealthier students understand the financial difficulties faced by those from less affluent backgrounds, Dr. Campbell said. “I also ask students to think critically about that system,” he said. Here are some questions and answers about financial literacy instruction: Do colleges give academic credit for personal finance classes? Most colleges offer credit toward graduation for introductory courses that combine economic concepts with principles of personal money management. (Some schools may also offer noncredit financial coaching or counseling, as a student service.) Is personal finance instruction effective? An analysis of 76 studies, published in 2022 in The Journal of Financial Economics, found that financial education programs on average had “positive” effects on financial knowledge and behaviors. How can I test my own financial knowledge? Dr. Lusardi helped develop a series of questions on concepts that are fundamental to financial understanding, such as compound interest, inflation and whether it’s riskier to buy the stock of a single company or to invest in a stock mutual fund. You can take a three- or five-question version of the quiz on the website of Stanford’s Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center.

Columbia University and one of its longtime law professors, Katherine Franke, have severed ties after an investigation stemming from her advocacy on behalf of pro-Palestinian students. It was the latest fallout from student and faculty activism related to the Gaza War on a major university campus. Ms. Franke, a tenured professor known primarily for her work as founder and director of Columbia’s Center for Gender & Sexuality Law, had been an advocate for pro-Palestinian students as protests erupted on the campus last school year. She was also one of several faculty members investigated by the university over allegations of antisemitism, after the school received complaints about comments she made about Israelis on a radio program. Describing her departure as a “termination dressed up in more palatable terms,” Ms. Franke said in a statement on Friday that she had reached an agreement with the university to leave, because Columbia had become a “toxic and hostile environment.” A Columbia University spokeswoman, Samantha Slater, said in a statement that the university was “committed to being a community that is welcoming to all and our policies prohibit discrimination and harassment.” She added that a complaint had been filed “alleging discriminatory harassment in violation of our policies. An investigation was conducted, and a finding was issued.” In a statement on Friday, the Center for Constitutional Rights, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization where Ms. Franke previously served on the board, called the end of Ms. Franke’s Columbia career “an egregious attack on both academic freedom and Palestinian rights advocacy.” The investigation of Ms. Franke involved comments she made on the left-leaning media platform Democracy Now! after an incident in January 2024 on the steps of Columbia’s Low Library. A smelly substance had been released on pro-Palestinian students during a rally demanding the university divest from Israel. One student who was suspended in connection with the incident — and who subsequently sued the university — was identified as a former member of the Israel Defense Forces. In the Democracy Now! interview several days later, Ms. Franke said that she and other professors at Columbia had been concerned about Israeli students coming to Columbia “right out of their military service” because they had been known to harass Palestinian and other students on campus. Two Columbia colleagues filed a complaint against Ms. Franke, saying that her comments amounted to harassment of Israeli members of the Columbia community. An outside law firm hired by the university to investigate the complaint found last November that the remarks violated Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action policies, which Ms. Franke said she appealed. The investigator also concluded that Ms. Franke had violated policy by disclosing the name of one of the complainants against her and reposting a social media post that made disparaging comments about him. During a congressional hearing in April, Dr. Minouche Shafik, then Columbia’s president, was asked by Rep. Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, what disciplinary actions had been taken against Ms. Franke. Ms. Stefanik misquoted Ms. Franke as having said that “all Israeli students who served in the I.D.F. are dangerous and shouldn’t be on campus.” During the hearing, Dr. Shafik responded, “I agree with you that those comments are completely unacceptable and discriminatory.” Dr. Shafik’s remarks during the hearing, about Ms. Franke and others, drew sharp rebukes from faculty members as inappropriate and damaging to her relationship with the faculty. Dr. Shafik resigned several months later, becoming the third university president who appeared before the congressional committee to leave her job. In her statement on Friday, Ms. Franke called Dr. Shafik’s remarks during the hearing defamatory. “President Shafik was aware at that time that Congresswoman Stefanik’s summary of my comments was grossly inaccurate and misleading,” Ms. Franke said. She said the hearing testimony led to death threats against her, as well as other forms of harassment. After Dr. Shafik’s testimony, she wrote, colleagues had videotaped her without her consent and leaked the videos to right-wing organizations. Students, she said, had gone so far as to enroll in her class to provoke discussions that they could record and post online, then file complaints against her. “I have also come to regard Columbia University as having lost its commitment to its unique and important mission,” Ms. Franke said in her statement. Rather than fostering critical debate, research and learning, she said, the university had “demonstrated a willingness to collaborate with the very enemies of our academic mission.”

Five college students in Massachusetts are accused of luring a man to the Assumption University campus in a plot that the police said was inspired by the television show “To Catch a Predator” and a fad on TikTok. The students were part of a larger group that chased the man from a campus building after he was invited there by a student on the dating app Tinder, expecting to meet an adult, according to a criminal complaint issued in Worcester District Court on Dec. 4. The campus police at Assumption University, a small Catholic school in Worcester, said in the complaint that the group accused the man of being a sexual predator, stopped him from leaving a student lounge and recorded the episode as part of a “deliberately staged event.” Two students assaulted the man, the police said. There was no indication that the man was trying to meet underage girls and the woman who invited him to the campus, Kelsy Brainard, 18, said on her Tinder profile that she was 18 years old, the police said. The police did not provide the man’s age. Videos of the episode, which happened on Oct. 1, were shared among students and seen by the police, who said that minutes after the man arrived on campus, he was watching a baseball game on a couch in a student lounge with Ms. Brainard and there was “ample personal space between them.” Suddenly, a large group of students appeared from hidden locations, the complaint said. The students berated the man “as a sexual offender,” grabbed him and blocked him from leaving the room, the police said. He escaped, and as a group of about 25 people chased him, a male, who is not named in the court documents because he is a minor, punched the man in the back of the head. Once the man reached his car, another student slammed a car door on him. It was unclear if the man was injured or sought medical treatment. The group of students had their phones out and were apparently recording the episode, according to the police, who also reviewed campus surveillance camera footage and interviewed students as part of their investigation. “A few minutes later you see the group coming back in, laughing and high-fiving with each other,” the police said. One of the students, Easton Randall, 19, told the police that the students had been inspired by “To Catch a Predator,” and videos popular on social media, the complaint said. It also said the group was trying to replicate a TikTok fad in which people lure a sexual predator to a location and either assault them or call the police. The popular NBC series “To Catch a Predator” ran from 2004 to 2008 and featured undercover sting operations where men were lured through online chat rooms to a house where they thought they were meeting a teenager for sex. The show’s host, Chris Hansen, would confront the men before they were arrested and ambushed by a camera crew. Some criticized the show because of NBC’s relationship with the police and an advocacy group that helped orchestrate the stings. Questions were also raised about the value and ethics of sensationalizing an undercover sting targeting possible sexual predators. One man killed himself as the police and a camera crew entered his home. NBC reached a settlement with the man’s family in 2008 after they filed a $108 million lawsuit against the broadcaster. At Assumption University, the police said in the complaint that the scheme was devised by a “core group” of six students, five of whom have been charged with kidnapping and conspiracy, including Mr. Randall, Isabella Trudeau, 18, and Joaquin Smith, 18. Ms. Brainard was also charged with intimidation and Kevin Carroll, 18, was accused of assault and battery with a deadly weapon. Mr. Carroll told police that he slammed the victim’s head into the car door, according to the criminal complaint, which did not address the student who is a minor. A lawyer for Mr. Carroll did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday. Lawyers were not listed on the court docket for the other four defendants, who could not immediately be reached for comment. The Assumption University president, Greg Weiner, said in a statement that the behavior described by the police was “abhorrent and antithetical to Assumption University’s mission and values.” He said the university’s Department of Public Safety immediately began investigating. “This situation is particularly sobering because the victim is an active-duty military service member,” the statement said. “His service reminds us of the sacrifices made by those who defend our freedoms, including the opportunity to pursue a college education.” The students are scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 16.

If immigration agents arrive on the doorstep of a New York City public school, principals have been told what to do. Ask the officers to wait outside, and call a school district lawyer. The school system has enrolled about 40,000 recent immigrant students since 2022. Now, as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to take office with promises to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, the district has shared with school staff a protocol to try to shield students who have a tenuous legal status. In a December letter to principals, Emma Vadehra, the district’s chief operating officer, wrote, “We hope using this protocol will never be necessary.” Still, New York and some other school districts across the country are readying educators and immigrant families for a potential wave of deportations. Later this month, the district will host a legal information session for parents. Its social workers have explained to families that under current law, undocumented immigrant children have the right to a public education, and federal immigration agents generally cannot arrest students or family members at schools. They have also noted that American public schools do not typically track the immigration status of students. But like other education leaders, Dr. Clark acknowledged that there was only so much reassurance he could offer. A longstanding policy prevents Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from making arrests at schools and other sensitive locations, such as hospitals and churches. But right-leaning policy advocates in Mr. Trump’s orbit, including the writers of Project 2025, a blueprint created for the new administration, have pushed to rescind the policy, arguing that to speed deportations, agents should be able to exercise judgment on where they operate. That has left many educators worried that federal agents could arrive at their doors. “We’re going to follow the law whether we agree with it or not,” Dr. Clark said. “If they have proper documentation to execute their lawful duties, we will work with them.” The Trump transition team did not respond to a list of detailed questions about migrant schoolchildren and deportation. But in a written statement, Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, said the president was given a mandate to deport criminals and terrorists. In communities across the country, local officials have debated how much to cooperate with the incoming Trump administration on deportations. New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams, a Democrat, has repeatedly voiced frustration with the number of migrants living in the city, and has recently taken a more conciliatory approach to Mr. Trump. Mr. Adams runs the New York City school system. Nevertheless, district officials have told principals and school security staff to immediately call a school district lawyer if ICE agents show up and demand access to a school — in part because it can be difficult for nonexperts to distinguish a judicial warrant from other types of paperwork. In the absence of a judicial warrant, the district “does not consent to nonlocal law enforcement accessing school facilities in any circumstances,” reads the official policy. For educators concerned about their students being deported, the city has directed them to online information sessions hosted by Project Rousseau, a nonprofit that provides legal services to immigrants. In one of those meetings, Bethany Thorne of Project Rousseau said teachers should tell families anxious about deportation to keep their children attending school, and to not skip a single court date, even if they do not have a lawyer. Missing court “is a surefire way to get yourself removed,” she said. In Chicago, which has enrolled as many as 17,000 recent immigrant students, issues related to the influx have become a factor in the contract negotiations between the teachers’ union and the public school system. The district is struggling to maintain staffing amid a budget deficit. But because of the many needs of recent immigrant students, schools need more investments for both smaller class sizes and more bilingual teaching assistants and social workers, argued Rebecca Martinez, campaign director for the Chicago Teachers Union. Among the migrant students are those “who have never been to school, or are in seventh grade and last went to school in second grade,” she said. “All that exists in one classroom, and that’s the pressure educators are facing.” The school district declined an interview request, but issued a written statement emphasizing its commitment to serving all children in Chicago, regardless of their immigration status or home language. In addition, the district said it planned to review with principals relevant laws and policies, such as the need for federal agents to display a warrant or demonstrate that there is an “imminent threat to public safety” before entering a school. In Denver, another hub for recent immigrants, Tricia Noyola, chief executive of the charter school network Rocky Mountain Prep, said that many families had been fearful since Election Day, but also “resolute” in their desire to stay in the country and keep their children in school. While Mr. Trump often talks about recent immigrants as threats, she said, she and her team have noticed how vulnerable they are — with some parents falling prey to scams in which they are given fake paychecks for construction work or asked to put down a deposit for an apartment that does not materialize. The superintendent in Los Angeles, Alberto Carvalho, said he hoped schools there would remain “protected ground,” according to The Los Angeles Times. Officials said they would provide information cards to parents outlining their rights, and would hold mandatory training sessions for employees on the limits of federal agents’ access to schools. Dr. Clark, the superintendent in Mount Diablo, noted that rumors about deportation have detracted from his district’s efforts to educate recent immigrant children. To make it easier for migrant students, mostly from Guatemala, to work part time, the district has opened a half-day high school program. Encouraging attendance is a priority, but is more difficult when families fear the authorities. “It’s disappointing that we’re having to have these discussions,” Dr. Clark said. “This talk taking place is a distraction.”

A federal judge on Monday sentenced a Pittsburgh man to five years in prison and his wife to three years of probation over their involvement in detonating an explosive that injured police officers at a 2023 campus protest over transgender rights at the University of Pittsburgh. The man, Brian DiPippa, 37, “ignited and dropped two homemade smoke bomb containers in and around a line of people waiting to enter a building for a scheduled event featuring guest speakers,” the Justice Department said in a news release on Monday. Afterward, Mr. DiPippa’s wife, Krystal DiPippa, 42, “concealed” him as he “ignited and threw a large explosive firework” into a group of university police officers who had gathered to form a barrier to prevent protesters from entering the rear of the building. The firework caused a loud explosion and injuries to several officers, the department said. The couple had “conspired to injure law enforcement officers and cause chaos at a college campus protest” Eric G. Olshan, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, said in the news release. A campus police sergeant told the court that she was knocked down when a device exploded as she tried to bat it away, resulting in leg burns, hearing loss and back injuries that required surgery, The Associated Press reported. “They attacked brave men and women who were trying to maintain order and protect the attendees,” Mr. Olshan said, adding that Monday’s sentencing “should serve as a deterrent for anyone who would consider engaging in such outrageous and dangerous conduct in the future.” Michael J. DeRiso, a lawyer for Mr. DiPippa, said on Tuesday that it was “unfortunate that the government has chosen to define my client by one act.” “Unfortunately, my client made a really piss-poor decision by throwing a firework into a crowd,” he said, adding that Mr. DiPippa “certainly had no desire to hurt or maim.” Michael Ovens, a lawyer for Ms. DiPippa, declined to comment on the case. The couple, who are from Pittsburgh, each pleaded guilty in September to one count of obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder, according to the Justice Department, and Mr. DiPippa also pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy. At Monday’s sentencing in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh, the couple were also ordered to pay $1,400 in restitution to the university as well as $47,284 to the injured officer, the Justice Department said. More than 150 people were at the protest, which was held on April 18, 2023, outside of a transgender-rights debate between Michael Knowles, a host at The Daily Wire, a right-leaning site, and Brad Polumbo, a libertarian journalist, at the O’Hara Student Center, The University Times, a university publication, reported. Jared Stonesifer, a spokesperson for the University of Pittsburgh, said in a statement on Tuesday that it “supports the right to peaceful demonstrations but will not tolerate threats or acts of violence that put others in harm’s way.” He added that the decision “cannot undo the physical and emotional injuries that our officers sustained.”

Four fraternity members at San Diego State University are facing felony charges after a pledge was set on fire during a skit at a party last year, leaving him hospitalized for weeks with third-degree burns, prosecutors said Monday. The fire happened on Feb. 17, 2024, when the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity held a large party at its house, despite being on probation, court documents show. While under probation, the fraternity was required to “demonstrate exemplary compliance with university policies,” according to the college’s guidelines. Instead, prosecutors said, the fraternity members planned a skit during which a pledge would be set on fire. After drinking alcohol in the presence of the fraternity president, Caden Cooper, 22, the three younger men — Christopher Serrano, 20, and Lars Larsen, 19, both pledges, and Lucas Cowling, 20 — then performed the skit, prosecutors said. Mr. Larsen was set on fire and wounded, prosecutors said, forcing him to spend weeks in the hospital for treatment of third-degree burns covering 16 percent of his body, mostly on his legs. The charges against Mr. Cooper, Mr. Cowling and Mr. Serrano include recklessly causing a fire with great bodily injury; conspiracy to commit an act injurious to the public; and violating the social host ordinance. If convicted of all the charges, they would face a sentence of probation up to seven years, two months in prison. Mr. Larsen himself was charged. The San Diego County district attorney’s office said that he, as well as Mr. Cooper and Mr. Cowling, also tried to lie to investigators in the case, deleted evidence on social media, and told other fraternity members to destroy evidence and not speak to anyone about what happened at the party. All four men have pleaded not guilty. Lawyers representing Mr. Cooper and Mr. Cowling did not immediately respond to messages requesting comment on Tuesday. Contact information for lawyers for Mr. Serrano and Mr. Larsen was not immediately available. The four students were released on Monday, but the court ordered them not to participate in any fraternity parties, not to participate in any recruitment events for the fraternity, and to obey all laws, including those related to alcohol consumption. The university said Tuesday that it would begin its own administrative investigation into the conduct of the students and the fraternity, now that the police investigation was complete. After it confirmed the details, the dean of students office immediately put the Phi Kappa Psi chapter on interim suspension, which remains in effect, college officials confirmed on Tuesday. Additional action was taken, but the office said it could not reveal specifics because of student privacy laws. “The university prioritizes the health and safety of our campus community,” college officials said in a statement, “and has high expectations for how all members of the university community, including students, behave in the interest of individual and community safety and well-being.” At least half a dozen fraternities at San Diego State University have been put on probation in the last two years, officials said.