Michael Capel

A recent string of police actions at Cornell University has students questioning the university’s commitment to free speech and the rule of law on campus. While several students attending a peaceful animal-rights demonstration were arrested by a seemingly out-of-control campus police force, conservatives are crying foul over an apparent double standard. The result of the turmoil has students on the Ithaca, N.Y. campus wondering whether "justice"—as defined by Cornell’s convoluted system of rules, regulations, and enforcement mechanisms—is really nothing more than whatever the particular cop on duty on any given day says that it is.

In October 1997, Cornell student Shaka Davis, who is black, stole hundreds of copies of the conservative newspaper, the Cornell Review, and systematically burned them over the course of several hours in front of a campus dining hall. Several university administrators and Cornell University Police Department (CUPD) officers present at the burning did nothing. Afterward, Review editors approached campus Judicial Administrator (JA) Barbara Krause about potential action against Davis, who claimed a "right to censorship" because a cartoon in the paper had offended him.

The JA is the administrator who enforces Cornell’s Campus Code of Conduct, a collection of quasi-criminal and quasi-civil rules. She has, in her view, "wide discretion" to define the provisions of the Code (which she describes as "deliberately vague") and decide how to go about investigating charges. She serves as prosecutor, judge, jury, and sentencer for students brought up on code charges. The Code has virtually no due-process guarantees.

Additionally, CUPD has the authority to arrest and charge students under New York state criminal law.

Neither CUPD nor the JA held Davis accountable for burning the Review. Its editors suggested that Davis’s actions could amount to endangerment, starting a fire without a permit, theft of property, and/or violation of free speech (a Code provision). Both entities chose not to investigate the case.

The university administration had previously condoned Review burning. In April 1997, at a rally where hundreds of copies of the paper were also burned (and the protesters again were not punished) by minority activists, university President Hunter Rawlings called the Review "exceptionally despicable." In his commencement address a few weeks later, Rawlings said that the Review was "offensive" and characterized the students’ response as "rapid and robust." In the Wall Street Journal, Vice President for University Relations Henrik Dullea also praised the arsonists’ response as furthering to promote "civil, albeit energetic, dialogue." These comments prompted U.S. News and World Report columnist John Leo to cite Rawlings both in 1997 and 1998 as a runner-up for his "Sheldon Hackney" award, given annually to the university president who exhibits exceptional pusillanimity in the face of newspaper destruction.

In fact, Davis told several administrators, including Dullea, of his intentions prior to burning the paper. Rather than trying to prevent Davis from engaging in censorship-by-fire, administrators stood by, instead choosing to lecture Review editors on the paper’s content. Dean of Students John Ford attended the burning and smiled approvingly.

Either Krause, the rest of the administration, and the police had a change of heart this fall, or else they do not equate the burning of copies of a conservative paper by minorities with the burning of a cloth doll by white students. Animal rights activist Bryan Pease was charged with a litany of offenses for an October 26, 1998 burning in effigy of a doll in front of the campus administration building. The doll, according to Pease, represented Prof. Fred Quimby, who oversees Cornell’s animal dissection program. Pease was arrested and charged by the police with open burning without a permit, failure to report a fire, criminal nuisance (for the danger supposedly created by the fire), and resisting arrest. He was interrogated and placed in a holding cell. Krause also brought him up on charges and issued an "order of protection"—which she claims that she has the right to do—restraining Pease from making any contact with Quimby. Krause refused to discuss the specific charges or the matter further.

Campus Report reminded both Krause and Cornell Police Investigator Stanley Slovik that Pease’s conduct was identical to Davis’s a year earlier: both were peacefully burning their own property (if one accepts for the sake of argument Krause’s assertion that the papers that Davis burned were not stolen) in a similar manner and in a public place without any sort of permit. As to the question of why Pease was charged and Davis was not, both officials declined comment.

Krause confirmed that Davis was not charged, but refused to comment otherwise, saying that she cannot speak about specific cases. Slovik told Campus Report that he was familiar with the Davis burning, but could not recollect CUPD’s rationale for not charging him. He refused to compare the facts of the two cases and explain the difference between them.

Review editors are mystified at what they see as a blatant double standard. Graduate student Joe Sabia, chairman of the Review, told Campus Report, "In both April and October 1997 militant students conducted Nazi-style burnings of our paper. The police were present but did nothing to prevent the crimes that were being committed. Their recent decision to charge Bryan Pease with ‘opening a burning without a permit’ is the height of hypocrisy. This is true racism—different standards of the law applied to individuals of different races."

A second incident involving Pease also sent chills down the spines of student activists. On November 2, Pease and about eight other students assembled in the hall outside a classroom where a dissection was being done. The protesters stood silently and held up letter-sized pieces of paper with quotes from animal-rights advocates so that they could be seen through the windows of the classroom.

The event was captured on video. Several CUPD officers—more than the number of protesters—approached the students and demanded to see their student identification cards. Pease noted that the officers knew that the group were students, as they had interacted with them before. Asking for student I.D. cards, Pease says, is a common practice, as it provides a pretext to evict students from the building if they do not comply. Some of the students, including the one holding the video camera, complied and produced their cards, and some did not. The police demanded that all of the students leave the building anyway, on the grounds of "trespassing." They physically pushed several of the protesters, including the cameraman, out the door.

The videotape next shows a startling sequence of events. Despite the fact that the students were not the least bit violent or resistant, the police handcuffed them, dragged them out of the building, placed several in tight choke-holds, forcefully placed them against the hood of their vehicles, frisked them, and arrested them. CUPD subsequently charged the protesters with trespassing and "harassment." They also issued a restraining order, saying that they would be arrested again if they entered the building where the protest occurred. On the document comprising the restraining order, the rationale is listed as "animal rights protest." The students were also charged by the JA with, according to Pease, "harassment" and failure to comply with a lawful order of a university official.

Pease sees the police tactics as excessive and complains that his free speech has been abridged. He referred to the stated rationale for the restraining order. In a Cornell Daily Sun column entitled "Police State" he added, "a major function of the police and judicial system these days seems to be neutralizing and stomping out activism which challenges the status quo."

Perhaps. What is clear is that administrators can arbitrarily invoke "orders of protection," students standing silently outside a classroom are said to be engaging in "harassment," and students with Cornell identification cards are charged with "trespassing" on university property. Starting a fire in a public place on campus is a crime one day but not the next, perhaps depending on what is burned, and by whom. Orwell would be proud.