Gabrielle Russon
University of Central Florida (UCF) student Christopher Gibson was among chanting protesters holding signs and flags in support of Palestinians at an Orlando City Hall meeting last year.
What happened next derailed Gibson’s schooling and led to a lawsuit.
Gibson said he was peacefully protesting off campus. Police have a different version of events.
According to the Oct. 7 Orlando Police arrest report, the 26-year-old Gibson, who wore a full ski mask, tried to get inside Orlando City Hall. Police said Gibson was “pushing his way in and pulling on the doors” and ignored a security guard ordering him to stop.
The police report said the security guard pushed Gibson’s hand away. Gibson responded by pushing the security guard’s shoulder and grabbing the guard’s hand to keep him from locking the doors.
Orlando Police knocked Gibson to the ground in the courtyard outside City Hall and arrested him, the report said.
“He resisted our efforts to detain him by pulling his arms away from us toward his chest. We were able to pull his arms out, place them behind his back, and secure him in handcuffs without further incident,” the arrest report said.
Gibson has pleaded not guilty to battery on a uniformed security officer, a third-degree felony, and resisting an officer without violence, a first-degree misdemeanor. The criminal case is pending.
Just before Christmas, UCF determined Gibson’s “harmful behavior” and “disruptive conduct” in downtown Orlando violated the university’s student code of conduct and suspended him for the 2025 Spring and Summer semesters.
“Getting threatened with student conduct charges based on events that took place off campus, based off criminal charges are bogus,” Gibson told UCF at his discipline hearing, according to court records.
When Gibson’s appeal was denied, he sued UCF in Orange Circuit Court this month and is asking the courts to reinstate him.
Gibson’s legal problems came as Florida schools were caught up in ongoing cultural wars and schools cracked down on pro-Palestinian students protesting on campuses.
Gibson argued that his rights as a student were violated because he wasn’t allowed to question a witness directly at his hearing. He also said in the lawsuit that UCF’s case against him was based on “an unsubstantiated police report.”
Gibson’s attorneys said they believe video footage from Orlando City Hall and Orlando Police Department exists and will exonerate him, but they didn’t have enough time to get it before the school rushed the student conduct violation case, the lawsuit said.
What makes Gibson’s lawsuit stand out is that it provides school records that would otherwise likely be confidential.
“We would have loved to show you footage from that event but we don’t have it,” Gibson told UCF officials at his school hearing.
Gibson, who grew up in Melbourne, said little during his UCF hearing last year because of the pending criminal case, according to the transcripts included in his civil lawsuit.
But Gibson, who had hoped to graduate in the Spring 2025 with an information technology degree, told UCF he was attended the protest to demand that the city of Orlando “disclose their investments in companies profiting off Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza,” he said.
The 25 or so protesters encountered about 40 police officers, Gibson estimated, and he said he was tackled and had his face “shoved into the pavement” during his arrest.
He cut his lower lip in a gash that Gibson said “went down to my chin.”
Gibson said police did not give him any instructions while he was being arrested.
At the discipline hearing, UCF officials were likely already familiar with who Gibson was.
Months earlier, Gibson admitted that he threw signs from an anti-abortion group into the UCF Reflection Pond, according to a March UCF Police report. The State Attorney’s Office declined to prosecute the criminal mischief and theft charges, according to a January filing.
Marcus Polzer, a UCF junior who was a member of the Students for Democratic Society, told UCF that his friend had been “brutally arrested” at the October protest that disrupted the Orlando City Hall meeting.
“Chris was arrested not even 10 feet away from me,” Polzer said, according to the transcripts included in Gibson’s lawsuit.
“Unfortunately, Chris was separated from everyone else. And that’s when he was effectively tripped and taken down to the ground. And not once did he ever lay a finger on any Orlando police officer or any security guard or any person, for that matter. The only people who engaged in violence were the OPD officers that took him down to the ground.”
Polzer brought up UCF taking action against other students protesting for Palestinians when he defended his friend.
“All I can say is that we see what the university is doing and we’re not going to stop,” Polzer said at Gibson’s school hearing. “We have a right to express our political views. We have a right to oppose an ongoing genocide that the United States is directly complicit in.”
Last year, UCF student Seif Asi was accused of snapping at students putting Israeli flags on campus. “You won’t be here anymore when I come back and shoot you,” Asi said, according to a UCF Police report.
Asi, who has lost family members in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, later said he was talking about shooting the flags, not the people. He appeared to be the first Florida public university student arrested for a new state crime related to a religious threat, but the State Attorney’s Office later dropped the charges.
Asi sued UCF last year after he was suspended for a semester. The lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed this month because “there is no longer a live controversy and that this case is now moot,” the filing said, as the suspension appears to be over.
Meanwhile, Gibson’s attorney, Matthew Ferry, said he is optimistic the courts will review Gibson’s appeal to return to school in the new lawsuit.
“We remain hopeful that the Court will thoroughly review the appeal and ensure that Mr. Gibson receives the due process he is entitled to as a UCF student. It was disappointing that the UCF panel disregarded the testimony of an independent witness who confirmed that Mr. Gibson did nothing wrong and was simply exercising his First Amendment right to free speech and peaceful protest,” Ferry said in a statement.
“We also expected UCF to grant Mr. Gibson a continuance so we could obtain additional surveillance footage, but unfortunately, they denied his request. We believe that this footage would have demonstrated his innocence.”
UCF did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
