Posted: 02/07/07

Outside of North Campus’s Linnehan Hall, students impatiently wait for the shuttle to bring them down to Main Campus for a round of Friday night festivities. Some were smoking cigarettes, some were chatting aimlessly and a girl standing on the curb was talking on her cell phone.

Suddenly, a security cruiser sped up next to the girl and an officer quickly steps out of the car. He immediately began to question the girl, pointing at her bag, automatically assuming that she somehow had a mini-bar in her ridiculously small designer purse.

Security officers magically surround Linnehan - one sauntered around the back of the building to check for suspicious activity, one stood outside the front to make sure that no one comes or goes and two came inside to interrogate some male students in the computer lab.

Now there’s a good chance that the girl outside and the students inside were under the influence of alcohol. After all, it was the first Friday night on campus since the beginning of Christmas break and students needed to unwind.

The problem with security’s actions over the course of the Jan. 19 – 20 weekend was the severity with which St. Michael’s security and Colchester Police dealt with students.

According to the minutes from a Student Association meeting held on Jan. 30, Dean of Students Mike Samara stated that St. Michael’s College has a “partnership” with the Colchester Police and that he had been in contact with the department before Jan. 19. This police presence is usually for the transport of intoxicated students to and from Act I.

But, on that first weekend, four Colchester police officers acted as if they felt it was their place to stake themselves around campus in various spots, making students feel like suspects at some kind of educational crime scene.

These officers checked bags, questioned random students and even knocked on townhouse doors, demanding that they be allowed in. This kind of intrusive “police work” is not keeping us safe, it’s merely keeping us paranoid.

Although our school says that it did not ask the police to come on this first weekend, our security force was not much better.

In the case of the girl outside Linnehan, who was not visibly intoxicated or in possession of a backpack or large bag, security did not provide anything close to appropriate probable cause.

Result: they questioned her sobriety and checked her purse nonetheless. Her mere presence outside of a St. Michael’s dorm was apparently reason enough.

Unfortunately for St. Michael’s director of security Peter Soons and his security crew, many students don’t feel the same way.

This Friday, Feb. 9, a student rights protest is being held on the lawn in front of the library. The event, which has been listed on popular student networking Web site Facebook, has drawn a decent amount of attention, including that of more than 160 students who currently plan to attend.

The protest’s Facebook description provoked discussion at the Jan. 30 S.A. meeting:

“ This is a protest against the administration of this school. They force us to live on campus and treat us like babies. Searching our rooms and invading our privacy.”

It is quite interesting to look at St. Michael’s security in this way - from outside our campus’s bubble. Security on campus invades our lives, both publically and privately, yet they keep a tight lid on their practices and on what our rights are.

Do we have to open our bags? Should we be stopped if we’re not stumbling around? Can cops randomly knock on townhouse doors demanding entry?

Questions abound, yet no clear-cut lines have been drawn. St. Michael’s security seems to have large outlines surrounding their definiton of probable cause and students have been conveniently left of out the loop.

Sure. I get it. We all signed housing contracts when we moved onto campus, so that removes some of our rights, but not our basic privacy and legal protection.

Attend the protest this Friday and demand to know what our rights as students are. Will you be supporting a lack of probable cause if you don’t go?

Probably.