The two Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies stu­dents ar­rest­ed dur­ing yes­ter­day’s protest at the St Au­gus­tine cam­pus have been grant­ed $5,000 bail each.

Nathaniel George and Bri­an Richards ap­peared be­fore a Tu­na­puna mag­is­trate around 10 am to­day, where they plead­ed not guilty to charges of dis­or­der­ly con­duct, ob­struct­ing a po­lice of­fi­cer in the con­duct of his du­ty and re­sist­ing ar­rest.

The stu­dents were ar­rest­ed af­ter they al­leged­ly tried to pre­vent of­fi­cers from re­open­ing UWI’s south­ern gates to traf­fic dur­ing a protest by stu­dents who were call­ing for UWI man­age­ment to do bet­ter with the han­dling of stu­dent safe­ty on the cam­pus.

The protest was sparked by Tues­day’s bloody at­tempt­ed rape and as­sault of a sec­ond-year fe­male stu­dent by an un­known as­sailant at the Stu­dent Ac­tiv­i­ty Cen­tre (SAC).

Stu­dent Guild pres­i­dent Dar­rion Nar­ine and some of his ex­ec­u­tive were on hand to of­fer sup­port to the stu­dents and cel­e­brat­ed with them as they walked out of the court.

The mat­ter was ad­journed to No­vem­ber 16.

The stu­dents were rep­re­sent­ed by a team of at­tor­neys led by for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al John Je­re­mie and in­clud­ing cur­rent St. Au­gus­tine MP Prakash Ra­mad­har.

More on this sto­ry as it de­vel­ops.