A forum at the University of Arizona Tuesday showcased intense emotions from students and faculty who demanded answers and an apology from UA President Robert Robbins over how his administration handled a viral Border Patrol protest.

Robbins did not apologize, and he limited his comments to an opening statement and one response to a direct question.

Hundreds of students turned out at the forum, dubbed a "campus conversation," where a panel of university officials, professors and one student weighed in on free speech issues.

And, if the conversation was meant to relieve any concerns or tension among the student body, it didn't appear to. The forum was tense and raw.

Throughout the two-hour meeting, a group called out "mic checks" where they loudly repeated comments in unison outside the 2-minute opportunities to speak people were provided.

"Make Robbins answer," they chanted at one point.

"Uniforms and guns are not protected speech. How can we be civil with a gun in our face?" they chanted regarding immigration enforcement agents' presence on campus.

Where was President Robbins?

The group repeatedly questioned why Robbins wasn't on the panel himself and asked for him to respond to pointed questions about why the university police decided to charge three students following a Border Patrol protest on March 19.

In one instance, a member of an activist group called the Coalition for the Arizona 3, which formed to support the three students charged, played a clip from an interview.

In the clip, Art del Cueto, the vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, said of one of the student protesters, "I would have punched her in the throat.”

The night before the forum, the group projected those words onto Old Main, where Robbins' office is.

UA Professor Sandra Soto, a member of the coalition, said she has been a professor at UA for 18 years and has never seen a president who's "so out of touch" with what it means to lead a university near the U.S.-Mexico border.

Soto demanded Robbins respond to del Cueto's comments. She walked a microphone up to Robbins, who was seated in the front row.

"I have never met this man," Robbins said. "The comments are despicable. ... Those kind of comments are unacceptable, absolutely hate speech."

In his opening remarks, Robbins acknowledged that "there have been mistakes made" and he's now "very focused on how we learn from those mistakes." The discussion Tuesday was meant as a way to continue listening to people, he said.

It was unclear what Robbins considered the "mistakes" to be or who he thought made them. He spoke minimally at the forum and would not grant an interview afterward.

Forum comes after dropped charges

The forum was the latest step development in more than a month of controversy over a student protest of Border Patrol agents and subsequent charges against three students.

Video posted on social media of the March 19 incident showed two Border Patrol agents in a classroom giving a presentation, with people outside the door recording them and calling them "Murder Patrol," "murderers," and "an extension of the KKK."

Three students were charged for interference with the peaceful conduct of an educational institution. One of the three also faced a second charge for threats and intimidation.

The charges for all three students were dropped on Sunday after multiple large protests at UA in the past couple weeks.

In a statement published on Facebook Monday, the three students said the dropped charges were a victory, but not the end of the conversation about Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement on campus.

"Of course we are celebrating our victory but we are also ready to get back to work. We want to encourage people everywhere to continue to fight to get CBP and ICE off campuses," their statement said.

Why were the charges dropped?

It's not clear why the charges were dropped. And the UA said its own investigation into potential student code of conduct violations is ongoing.

Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall's office said prosecutors filed motions to dismiss the charges without prejudice, which means they could be refiled. Those motions were granted by the court.

The office decided to file the motions to dismiss "based upon a careful review of the facts and the law and the relevant circumstances in each case," Chief Deputy Pima County Attorney Amelia Craig Cramer wrote in an email.

But, she added, "the more specific factual and legal reasons for the decisions are confidential attorney work-product not subject to disclosure."

Four Republican state lawmakers issued a statement Tuesday criticizing the decision not to prosecute the students.

Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, said he's heard from people that the UA has become closed-minded, and free speech is routinely shut down.

"Students have told me, ‘We know the socialist garbage our professors are spewing is junk, we just have to please them to get the grade from those who have power,'" Finchem wrote.

He backed Robbins' administration and said he stands by Robbins for taking a stand "for the rule of law."

"Students who disrupt classrooms with their political protests rob other students of the opportunity to hear messages that they may or may not agree with but are worth hearing to learn critical thinking skills," Finchem wrote.

Were voices heard?

Two members of the Tuesday panel, Professors Nolan Cabrera and Anna Ochoa O’Leary, were called out for being on the panel instead of joining the coalitionin the audience and standing against the administration.

Coalition members criticized the makeup of the panel, with one person saying it was a representative of Robbins "tokenizing" people of color.

Ochoa O’Leary, a professor and the head of the Mexican American Studies department, said she was trying to find a bridge in the conversation as a way to stop the injuries going back and forth.

“At some point, we have to decide to heal,” she said. “I’m not sure if this is healing, I can only do what I feel instinctually is the right thing to do.”

Raquel Gutiérrez, a graduate student and a member of the coalition, said she thinks the group was heard at the forum, but not necessarily responded to. The fact that Robbins wouldn’t apologize shows a disregard and disrespect for what students have gone through in the past month, she said.

“I don’t think it served the conversation in any way not to have Robbins on the panel, and it invited a lot of us to put more pressure on him,” she said.

The group is still hopeful its demands for an apology and for a policy limiting or prohibiting Border Patrol and ICE from campus will be successful, she said.

Carol Brochin, a professor in the UA’s education college, also called on Robbins to apologize at the meeting.

“Without an apology, it feels difficult to move forward,” Brochin said.

After the event, Brochin told The Republic she was “really upset” that Robbins didn't apologize. And she said the group is happy the charges were dropped, but they shouldn’t have been filed in the first place.

There was only one student on the panel — the university's student body president — and Brochin said the panel had a “top-down” feel to it. That’s why the coalition used other tactics to disrupt the event and include student voices, she said.

She said she’s “skeptical” those voices were actually heard by the administration.

“We have a lot of work to do ahead of us,” Brochin said.

Some perspectives shouted down

Students who understood the discipline for the three charged students said they didn't feel respected by others who shouted down their comments.

Brian Mitchell, a freshman, said his family is from Chile and that he feels a sense of fear on campus because his beliefs are right-leaning. People in the crowd challenged his comments.

"I was expecting something more tame to be honest, but I guess that was naive of me," Mitchell told The Republic.

He said the next forum needs to be calmer and more inclusive of different ideas.

Matthew Minor, the newly elected president of UA College Republicans, said he thought the forum “could have gone better.” He said the disrupting group tried to shut down people they didn’t agree with, but he was grateful the university provided the platform for discussion.

He said he thinks there’s a lot of “fear mongering” about Border Patrol on campus.

“They do not come here and just abduct people and when they’re invited they should have a right to speak,” he said.

He hopes the conversation continues but doesn’t want to see “mob rule” control the discussion next time.

What will happen next?

Panelists said the forum would be the first of many conversations and that the issues could not be solved in a two-hour session.

Further discussions and planning sessions are expected.

Jeff Goldberg, UA's interim senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, said the university plans to put a system together that will require groups who invite speakers to inform administrators who the speakers are so the university knows how to handle the event.

In response to a student question about how the university was protecting undocumented students and people of color, Goldberg said he didn't have a great answer at the moment. He said the university was dedicated to working on it.

"We are working hard to try to solve these kinds of issues," Goldberg said. "Do we have a solution right now? I don’t think we have that solution. That’s exactly why we’re here."

The university has administrators and professors who are ready to work on these issues, Goldberg said, as his comments were cut off by a group disrupting with a "mic check."

Reach reporter Rachel Leingang by email at rachel.leingang@gannett.com or by phone at 602-444-8157, or find her on Twitter and Facebook.

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