The Occupy Harvard protesters plan to dismantle most of their tents Monday in a move the occupiers hope will prompt university administrators to reopen the gates of Harvard Yard to the public, they said yesterday.
Calling it a transition, not a retrenchment, the student occupiers said they would remove the 20 sleeping tents that form the bulk of the camp but maintain a continual presence at the geodesic dome erected at its center, even through winter break.
“This is not an end to the occupation,’’ said Jeff Bridges, a third-year graduate student at Harvard Divinity School. “We think it’s really important to maintain a presence in Harvard Yard, and we will be continuing to maintain a presence. This is a movement to the next phase.’’
Responding immediately to the encampment, the university took the rare step Nov. 9 of locking Harvard Yard to anyone lacking Harvard identification. Administrators said doing so was necessary for student safety, but locking gates shut out the streams of tourists and passersby who have long walked through the storied yard.
A Harvard spokesman said yesterday that the school wants to reopen the gates and eliminate the ID checkpoints, but would not say when that would happen.
“We are aware that the group has stated its intention to remove the unoccupied tents in the Yard,’’ university spokesman John Longbrake said in a statement. “We have no interest in limiting access to the Yard for a day longer than necessary to ensure the security of the members of our community, and we continue to meet regularly to evaluate the situation.’’
The student occupiers said the tent removal will mark the beginning of “Occupy 2.0,’’ as the community continues trying to engage Harvard on issues of social and economic justice.
The group says they have succeeded in drawing support from a number of faculty members, encouraging Harvard to raise wages and benefits in contract negotiations with custodians, and staging a teach-in that drew hundreds of participants.
Last week, Harvard said it would consider whether to continue to invest some of the billions of dollars in its endowment with HEI Hotels & Resorts, the hotel and investment group that has been criticized by Occupy Harvard and other advocacy groups.
Meanwhile, prosecutors dropped charges yesterday against an official with the National Lawyers Guild at a pretrial hearing for Occupy Boston supporters who were arrested Oct. 11.
As protesters attempted to expand the Occupy Boston encampment to a stretch of the Rose Kennedy Greenway north of Dewey Square two months ago, Urszula Masny-Latos, executive director of the Massachusetts chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, was arrested, along with others, and charged with trespassing and unlawful assembly. She argued that she identified herself as a legal observer during the fracas between police and protesters, and pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Yesterday, prosecutors in Boston Municipal Court yesterday dropped their case against Masny-Latos.
Nineteen Occupy Boston protesters who pleaded not guilty to charges of trespassing and unlawful assembly also appeared in court. Crowding into the standing-room-only courtroom, they chuckled when a security officer called on them to “occupy the sides’’ of the court.
Those protesters are scheduled to return to court Feb. 28 at 9 a.m. for a discovery hearing.
One of the protesters arrested during last week’s police raid has also been charged with two counts of assault and battery using a deadly weapon. Those weapons, police contend, were a kitchen sink and a dolly.
When Rita Sebastian, 58, was arrested in the Saturday morning raid, she was informed that she would also be charged in connection with the sink dispute.
Protesters attempted to bring the industrial-size stainless steel kitchen sink into the camp two weeks ago in an effort to meet health requirements, but were stopped by police who said building materials were not allowed in the camp.
An officer saw the 5-foot-1 woman “place both of her hands on the sink and ram the sink along with the dolly into Officer John Shaughnessy, striking the sink and dolly into Officer Shaughnessy’s shins and pushing his legs backward,’’ according to a police report.
Sebastian said yesterday that her lawyer advised her not to comment on the charges. But the sink “is very upset about being labeled as a dangerous,’’ Sebastian said. “She just wanted to be able to do our dishes.’’
Mary Carmichael of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Moskowitz can be reached at emoskowitz@globe.com; Powers at mpowers@globe.com.