UCA senior Alex Barnett almost missed last semester’s finals for a 10-day jail sentence, handed down April 25 by Judge Chris Carnahan.

Barnett, now 21, was arrested with two other UCA students who sat in the Conway Public Schools administration building’s lobby and chanted, “Trans lives matter” at a Nov. 8 school board meeting.

Barnett, still facing misdemeanor trespassing and failure to disperse charges, said UCA’s dean of students, Kelly Owens, was unwilling to help him make academic arrangements.

“We do not have a specific policy for students who are incarcerated,” Owens said, adding her office could not comment on specific situations.

Barnett said, “A part of the dean of student’s job is to make accommodations for students who are institutionalized during their semester. She blatantly just decided not to do her job whenever it came to me getting arrested over a political protest.”

In an email to Barnett’s girlfriend a day after his sentencing, Owens said, “You have already explained this situation to the instructors and they can decide if they feel this is a valid reason for granting an extension.”

Barnett said all his professors were “incredibly understanding” and let him make up work from the days he missed for his trial and subsequent day in jail.

“I’ve gotten nothing but just a ton of support from the UCA faculty about this,” he said. 

He said he expected to spend the entire sentence in jail when he went in, but his lawyer at the time bailed him out after appealing the sentence the next evening.

Barnett’s current lawyer, David Hogue, said, “Freedom of speech is at play here. At the same time, you can’t exercise your freedom of speech to the point that it disrupts a public meeting or public services, and so that’s the issue.”

The school board went into recess after the chanting but continued the meeting after shutting the door less than 10 minutes later.

The two misdemeanors are class C, which is the least serious type of misdemeanor in Arkansas, with a maximum penalty of 30 days in jail, according to state law.

The sentence came as a surprise to Barnett, as he said his lawyer at the time told him the prosecutor was not seeking jail time. He also was fined $650.

He said he went straight from court to his cell, where he and a van of newly sentenced inmates missed the jail’s dinner period, so they didn’t get to eat.

“Pretty much all of us had only eaten one meal that day,” Barnett said.

Barnett said as soon as he got to jail, he called friends and family to make arrangements for his finals.

“I would have gotten out on the last day of finals at 5 p.m., which would have meant that my sentence was exactly long enough for me to miss all my finals and fail all of my classes,” he said. “I just had to basically hope that all my professors were going to be OK with it.”

Barnett’s April trial with Carnahan was Barnett’s first time in criminal court; he’s only ever gotten a speeding ticket.

Hogue said, “He got a sentence that was above and beyond what somebody would normally get on something like that, on a charge like that, so it’s mostly to appeal the sentencing to see if we can get a lower sentence.”

“We’re just gonna get it as reasonable as possible unless we can get an acquittal,” Hogue said.

Barnett said he has never been interested in taking a plea deal, but it is no longer an option.

Hogue said, “As far as I can tell, the city isn’t interested” in negotiating a plea deal.

Barnett said, “I’m not about to beg the court for forgiveness whenever I haven’t done anything wrong.

“I admitted [in court] I was the one who organized the protests. I said what I did was morally correct, and that I had absolutely no regrets,” he said.

Before his sentencing, the court was shown police body camera footage of the protest and arrest. Barnett said while the two officers in the case “mostly told the truth,” they misrepresented some facts.

“The cops said that the meeting got shut down for the entire time that we were protesting, and they lied about that on the stand,” Barnett said.

Barnett said, “The one part where if you asked me, they just blatantly lied, was whenever they said that the protesters there were intimidating the people at the school board meeting and were scaring them, that people were terrified of us sitting down and chanting and not doing anything violent.”

Barnett said the body camera footage told a different story.

“There are people in the lobby with us who weren’t part of the protest, that were there all the way up until the cops threatened to arrest them. If anything, it seems like they were more afraid of the cops than they were of us,” Barnett said.

Barnett said he appealed his initial sentence because “there’s a lot more room for making complex legal arguments.” He said he doesn’t believe he trespassed since it was a public meeting.

Barnett said he and his new lawyer are opting for a bench trial, meaning they will argue his case Oct. 25 to Judge Harry Foster instead of a jury.

Nontraditional student Colburn Clark student faced the same charges with the same judge May 25 and appealed his resulting three-day sentence.

Clark said the city attorney recommended a $650 fine and no jail time, but the judge added a sentence.

“Carnahan, a guy with ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ pictures on his Facebook, decided to sentence me to three days in jail for the criminal trespass and three days in jail for the failure to disperse to be served concurrently in addition to the $650 fine,” he said.

Clark said jail staff would not offer him religious dietary accommodations, like vegan food.

“I don’t want to create any demand for animal products. I volunteer at an animal sanctuary and have been vegan for over six years,” he said.

Clark asked the staff not to bring him meal trays, but they did anyway.

“I would just do the three days and save the $1,650 in attorney fees, but I don’t want to create demand for products that will kill pigs, cows or chickens,” Clark said.

The third UCA student arrested, Keylen Botley, pleaded guilty and paid a $650 fine. Botley said someone studying law at his church told him it would be better to plead guilty.

Barnett said the school district’s reaction to the three UCA students’ arrests was “bullshit.”

In a Nov. 10 internal email addressed to district staff, Superintendent Jeff Collum said, “After repeated requests for quiet to the crowd, administrators asked law enforcement to clear the lobby and remove disrupters.

“We learned the three individuals arrested were not from Conway. They were from Little Rock, Bentonville and Mayflower,” the email said.

School board member David Naylor echoed the same accusations in a Jan. 26 speech to a legislative committee to support a bill that made Conway’s bathroom and overnight trip assignment restrictions, the policies Barnett protested against, statewide. It is now Act 317.

“We’ve had people arrested at our school board meeting. The three people arrested were from Mayflower, Little Rock and Bentonville. We’ve had activists come in from all over,” Naylor said.

Barnett said, “We live in Conway. We go to school in Conway. I go to my parents’ house over the breaks, but the vast majority of my time is spent in Conway, Arkansas. I have a vested interest in the policies that happen here and I get a right to have a say in those policies.”

Barnett is registered to vote in Faulkner County, along with Clark.

The nonprofit publication ProPublica covered Barnett’s trial in “The Student Protesters Were Arrested. The Man Who Got Violent in the Parking Lot Wasn’t.” Judd Legum’s Popular Information Substack also covered Barnett’s trial.

Barnett said seeing his story get national attention “was a good feeling.”

“People are starting to consider the local issues that are actually going to affect them on a day-to-day basis. I say all the time, your local sheriff, your local school board, all of your local politicians are going to affect your day-to-day life far more than who’s going to be president,” Barnett said.