I was saddened to find this article in my alma mater's paper this morning:
A University student reported his group's protest in front of Scott Hall was disrupted by a police search - an event that remains under investigation.
Rutgers University Daily Targum Article (free reg may be required)
More excerpts below.
Three students showed up at Scott Hall, one of the busier classroom buildings, early in the morning to set up a protest for later in the day. Their plan was to use chalk to draw outlines of bodies on the ground in protest of the war in Iraq. Chalk use at the university was debated (and briefly outlawed) while I was a student there. The administration and police finally decided that because there is no permanent damage to sidewalks, etc., use of chalk is acceptable.
And yet, here's what happened to Alex van Schaick and Kathleen Wells:
Three RUPD vehicles pulled up to College Avenue in front of Scott Hall, van Schaick said, and each officer exited their vehicle to question van Schaick and Wells..."We were shocked but compliant," van Schaick said. "[They] ordered us to 'Get your hands on the car.'" The officers asked them to open their car trunks, show identification cards and asked if the pair had weapons, van Schaick said.
Your papers please? And what was the excuse for the police action?
[RUPD Lt.] O'Neal said the officers were responding to a third-party call. "When a third party or citizen calls and says somebody is writing on a building or the ground, we have to respond," O'Neal said.
Apparently violating a person's rights is okay, as long as someone else complains first. And talk about overkill. Three police vehicles? That was probably all of the officers that were on-duty at the time, around 7:30 to 8 am, just before the first class. The Rutgers University-New Brunswick campus is spread out across the City of New Brunswick and Piscataway, NJ in 4 mini-campuses, and yet the RUPD saw the need to devote a majority of their active force to this activity, which was deemed not criminal.
No arrests were made, and no one was charged, O'Neal said.
I graduated from Rutgers University about two and a half years ago now. Like most large universities, there was always a protest taking place somewhere on campus. Some protests, especially those where counter-protests formed, were monitored by police, but students were never harassed, and certainly never had their rights violated in such an obvious manner. These are not just college rent-a-cops. Rutgers police are actually New Jersey State Police on assignment to the Rutgers Police Department. They've had all the standard training and should have known better. What's the police department's response?
An internal complaint was made against one of the responding officers and has led to an investigation, O'Neal said. But the RUPD is not allowed to comment on such matters.