Harvard University asked prosecutors yesterday to drop charges against its four undergraduate students arrested last week for heckling FBI Director Robert Mueller during a speech he gave at the school April 26.

Minutes into the director’s speech at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he spoke about the delicacies of balancing civil liberties with national security, Harvard seniors Michael Gould-Wartofsky, Kelly Lee, Jennifer Provost and Maura Roosevelt were arrested by university police after they shouted criticisms at Mueller.

Although a Harvard statement released yesterday criticized the students for disrupting the event, saying they should have waited until the forum’s question-and-answer session to express their views, the university asked the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office to drop its charges.

“The University is persuaded that more could have been done in the circumstances to apprise the students that they were in jeopardy of arrest,” the statement said. “Without condoning the students’ behavior at the Forum, broader principles have led the University to request that the criminal charges against the students be dropped.”

District Attorney spokesman Corey Welford said yesterday the office has not yet decided whether it will drop the charges against the students as Harvard requested, but hinted it has considered university recommendations in other nonviolent cases before.

Last week was the first time in recent years Harvard students have been arrested for protesting a school gathering.

Harvard spokesman Joe Wrinn would not comment further on the incident, directing all inquiries to the District Attorney’s Office.

Lee said she was surprised police arrested her because the group had carefully read and adhered to the school’s Statement on Rights and Responsibilities, guidelines that require police to warn disruptive students before detaining them.

“I respect Harvard’s rules, and I think [they] are fair and just, so we tailored our protest to the guidelines so that we wouldn’t actually be breaking the rules,” she said.

Roosevelt said the group would have acted differently had authorities warned them before they faced immediate arrest.

“We were waiting for a warning,” Roosevelt said. “Had we received a warning, we would have left.”

Roosevelt disputed the police report, which stated the students shouted “the FBI are murderers” and “FBI equals terrorism.”

“We said neither of these things,” she said.

Harvard Police Department spokesman Steven Catelano said the students’ actions merited their arrest.

“The only thing that had to do with it was disruptive behavior [at] a school assembly,” he said.

Catelano added his department assigns officers to Kennedy School forum, because they attract high-profile speakers.

“There’s heads of state, there’s government officials,” he said. “They attract an A-list crowd of people.”

Though he could not recall the last time a Harvard undergraduate was arrested for protesting on campus, Catelano said the police have arrested non-student protesters before.

“Protest is a part of college life,” he said.

The students are scheduled to appear in court May 10.