Masked Group Attacked Student and Defaced Patriotic Symbol; Tufts Drops Assault Charges

By Christopher Chow

Tufts University refused to pursue assault charges against three students who attacked junior Sam Dangremond for expressing patriotic views. The assailants ironically belonged to a left-wing student group, the Coalition for Social Justice and Nonviolence.

A long held tradition for generations of students at Tufts University has been painting the cannon in the main quad. Students decorate the reproduction of a cannon from the U.S.S. Constitution with symbols and phrases. But when Sam Dangremond painted the American flag on the cannon, he crossed the line into political incorrectness.

Dangremond is the editor-in-chief of The Primary Source, the conservative magazine at Tufts University. On the evening of October 1, he painted an American flag and the phrases, "God bless America" and "liberty and justice for all" on the cannon to honor those killed on September 11. An angry student shouted at him, "You better be guarding tonight. We're going to get you and it's going to be good." As is tradition at the Medford, Massachusetts school, Dangremond camped out by the cannon overnight. "It's a tradition in the sense that staying the night up there is a symbolic act of dedication to whatever you've painted on the cannon," he told Campus Report.

At 5:00 am the next morning while he was in his sleeping bag, Dangremond was attacked by three assailants in hooded sweatshirts and bandanas over their faces. Two of them wrestled him to the ground and held him down, while a third painted over the cannon's patriotic symbols, writing, "Violence has no peace."

Once Dangremond was able to free himself, he called the Tufts Police Department. The police found the three aggressors, Tufts seniors Adam Carlis, Lou Esparza, and Liz Monnin, still by the cannon. They are all members of the student group, the Coalition for Social Justice and Nonviolence, and worked for the left wing Tufts newspaper the Radix. The attackers admitted to the police that they had restrained Dangremond. They were not taken into custody, but Dangremond did file assault charges against them. The attackers in turn filed assault charges against Dangremond, claiming that he had attacked them.

The attackers' student group, the Coalition for Social Justice and Nonviolence distributed an e-mail stating, "Some of our Coalition members were assaulted although the charges are being brought upon them." They did not explain why their members wore bandanas covering their faces or why they made threats the previous evening.

The matter was to be dealt with by the dean of students judiciary, which consists of deans and sub-deans. The dean holds hearings regarding charges filed with Tufts University Police Department, to judge guilt or innocence and determine punishment.

After a hearing, the deans dismissed all charges against Dangremond. His three attackers were found guilty only of harassment and not assault. The deans chose probation as the punishment, rather than suspension. The dean of judicial affairs, Veronica Carter, told Dangremond, "based on the admissions of [the accused] that they intended to paint over your work, even if you were present, and they practiced physical non-violent strategies prior to going to the cannon, the panel found the three students to be guilty of harassment."

This statement gave no comfort to the victim who told Campus Report his safety is uncertain. "It's a matter of me not feeling safe on this campus. These three people could get away with this and only be given essentially a wrist slap by being put on probation 1. It really shakes my confidence that that would happen."

Since the incident, boxes of copies of The Primary Source have been stolen. Many other students have been concerned about safety on campus.

Former Primary Source editor-in-chief Joshua Martino was pleased by the off-campus outrage over Tufts' refusal to discipline the attackers. "That told Sam [Dangremond] and I that this is taken a lot more seriously in the real world. Not at college where people are willing to turn a blind eye when someone paints over an American flag," he told Campus Report. "Anyone familiar with life on a politically correct campus knows that there is no justice for conservatives."

"Sam and I are now university-sanctioned targets for violence. The staff of our magazine lives in fear of harassment by the new Tufts definition; that is, we fear assault, censorship, and watching our attackers be pardoned," Martino explained the difficulty of heading the Source.

"At a left-leaning university, that's a tough job. I should know; I was Sam's predecessor. In my four years at Tufts, I've seen leftists mobilize against swordfish in the cafeteria, decry the inherent racism of The Lion King, and protest a lecture by Colin Powell. I thought I'd seen the worst of campus radicalism by my senior year when I let Sam take over as chief editor. Then one night, three campus radicals assaulted Sam because he displayed the American flag."

The Primary Source is no stranger to controversy at Tufts. The student publication most recently came into conflict with its opponents when senior Iris Halpern filed a sexual harassment complaint against the paper for printing a cartoon of her in a tank top.

Halpern is a member of the Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM) which campaigns for higher wages for the Tufts staff and against sweat shops. SLAM and Tufts Feminist Alliance (TFA) rallied against the Source at a Committee on Student Life hearing addressing possible sexual harassment concerning the cartoon. At the meeting, SLAM and TFA shouted, "stop looking at my breasts" and "keep your First Amendment off my body." The Committee found that the Source had not violated sexual harassment codes.

After the attack and the theft of his magazines, Dangremond is concerned with his safety. "I don't know what people can get away with now. It seems like they can do a heck of a lot of things. They can threaten me, they can assault me, and the administration is not going to stop it," Dangremond told Campus Report. "It's just a general lawlessness. Once the administration doesn't enforce the rules all hell breaks loose."