AUBURN – A Bates College student and his friend have pleaded guilty to setting fire to school property last spring.

In an agreement with the District Attorney’s Office, Edmund Antell, 19, of Sherborn, Mass., and his friend, Kyle Pickard, 19, also from Sherborn, pleaded guilty to criminal mischief. In return, the District Attorney’s Office agreed to drop the charges of arson.

The fire occurred in May. A fire investigator has said the two teens found a canister of gasoline near Lake Andrews, where landscaping work was under way. He said they poured it on the pavement and lit it. The canister also was burned, spreading the fire to a nearby pile of signs.

Firefighters were called to the campus about 2 p.m. and quickly put out the fire. It scorched a small area of mulch. No one was injured.

Antell and Pickard were arrested shortly after the fire was extinguished. Antell, a member of the Bates Class of 2011, was completing his freshman year at the school at the time. Pickard had been visiting him.

Pickard’s attorney, Henry Griffin, called the fire “a prank that went too far.”

In Androscoggin County Superior Court on Tuesday, the men pleaded guilty to criminal mischief and accepted a deferred disposition so that sentencing was put off for a year. If Antell and Pickard stay out of trouble, pay $250 each in restitution and complete 100 hours each of community service within that year, the criminal mischief charges will be dismissed. If the men fail to abide by the conditions, they will be sentenced.

Antell and Pickard were released on their own recognizance Tuesday.

Pickard will return to college in Colorado, Griffin said. Antell will return to Bates in January.

A Bates College spokesman said last spring that Antell was asked to leave the campus following his May arrest. Because Antell was interested in returning this fall, he was subjected to the college’s student judiciary review. That review resulted in his disciplinary suspension for the fall semester, but it allowed him to return for the winter semester.

The college offered no official reaction to Tuesday’s plea.