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NDE are the national educational radio network presents special of the week. We continue with the present patients from the Ann Arbor symposium student protest and the law held in mid-May at the University of Michigan under the auspices of the Institute of continuing legal education. Last week you heard the beginning of an address by Mr. Edward Palladian attorney with the New York firm representing Columbia University. Mr. Clegg in continuos now talking about the recent legislation passed in the New York legislature on students and colleges with special reference to the topic of this part of the symposium the campus on the community problems of dual jurisdiction. MR. I think there may be a sleeper in the requirement that the new rules must contain provisions for he Jackson's by a later years now. Such experience as we have had indicates to us. That the only way to eat jacked a violator
is to use police and the use of police improvidently. Isal is something that we have pretty much learned it has much to be avoided. But if the rules. Sure would be required. It would be required under the rules that campus authorities immediately call the police and if the rules are to be interpreted as depriving campus authorities of any discretion as to when police should be used on a campus then we have a very serious problem. And I think the problem borne of lack of understanding of what an academic institution is on the part of those who are seeking to legislate on the subject. Now there is another possible consequence of this statute.
And that it tends to involve the state. In the rule making. And disciplinary proceeding functions. Of private universities and to that extent. It may increase the possibility is that at some time in the future some court mind hold that what has hitherto been regarded as a private university is engaged in state action when it undertakes to conduct a disciplinary proceeding against a student or a faculty member. I think that I say that it merely increases the possibility. I hope that I will not be quoted in court some day by. A
lawyer from the National Lawyers Guild as saying that I conceded the point at this forum. Because I would like to think that the gross interaction the gross and the decision will be the law for a while. Now this proposed amendment. That would make enforcement of the rules and additional conditions for participation in state aid also has its somber aspects. It is signed by the Governor Weld those who sit in judgment of students in the future have to have in the back of their mind the possibility that a whole chain of losses that is a chain of decisions adverse to the university may
result in aid in jeopardizing the university's stayed. And if sour will he be inclined to resolve reasonable doubts against the student when he otherwise would do would resolve those doubts in the student's favor. Now there has been other. Legislation passed at the last session of the New York legislature. And a enactment which has gone to the governor. But I don't believe has yet been signed. Involves section 634 of the Education Law. This bill would deprive a state scholarship or financial aid to students convicted of any felony or misdemeanor such as
criminal trespass unlawful assembly. And crimes of that sort in which the accusatory document alleges that the offense was committed on a campus. Now this brings me back to a question that someone raised was destructing I really raised with me just before that during the intermission. And that is how for purposes of the first act that is the rulemaking act how what is meant by state aid. I don't know the answer to that. I do know this that I think commencing in our in September there is a new program of state aid to institutions in amounts based upon the number of different kinds of degrees that they grab. Whether this rulemaking stature would also required compliance in order for a student who is the holder of a state scholarship to get
the benefit of that scholarship. I don't know the answer to it but that is one question that I think people are going to have to find the answer to pretty soon. There are other examples of the hysteria. There was a proposed at the legislature passed and forward to the governor a proposed and Nachman penal law Section Two for all point to two which defines a new crime of aggravated disorderly conduct. For the disruption of normal functions of a college or university occurring HANO within 500 feet of the campus as a Class A misdemeanor. This of this is an offense which would be punishable by a sentence not to exceed one year. Other proposed modifications were passed out of the penal law were passed by the legislature involving the use of firearms. Obviously a quick
sequel to the events recent events at Cornell. The unauthorized possession of firearms on a campus is a Class A misdemeanor unless committed by a person who has been previously convicted of any crime in which event it's a class B felony. The same act would make a person guilty of criminal trespass in the first degree when in committing such a crime he possesses or know was that another practice upand possesses explosives deadly weapons or firearms and has accessible ammunition therefore. Well supposing one group of students conducts a sit in in building a on one side of the campus and another group Students are part of the same per person ration occupies a building be on the opposite side of the campus
and the students in Building B have more tough cocktails or firearms what will be the consequences to those who are building a. Congress has also been active I should before I leave the state I should say that there is one other piece of legislation which has passed in New York which sets up a legislative investigative committee. A legislative investigative committee to look into the causes of student disorder and what might be done about it. Now in Congress there have been bills introduced. One of them a chart 10 0 7 4. I would require a suspension of federal assistance to institutions of higher education which experience disorders and fail to take appropriate protective measures within a reasonable time.
It would also require the terminations of financial assistance to teachers instructors and lecturers guilty of violation of any law in connection with such a campus disorder. A child 10 5 7 1 would. Establish a federal or higher education mediation and conciliation service. Something I can I would gather to the NLRB. I am not satisfied in my own mind that the kinds of disputes which exist between universities and their students have very much in common. With disputes between labor and management. What is insufficiently realized by those seeking to react. In our legislatures is the singular nature
of an institution of higher education. The extremely delicate balance of circumstances which makes such a place a worthwhile. Institution in which to teach or a worthwhile place in which to learn the fragility of an academic institution is not realized. The community is clearly concerned about what's going on. With an intensity that it has not shown about other issues in recent years. We are experiencing For instance now the initiation of criminal charges involving campus conduct by district attorneys acting entirely independently of any requests from the university. Only that this past week the New York Times has reported such cases emanating from the Cornell campus and from the Brooklyn College campus.
These I think have to be viewed to some extent as a reaction. To. Be with the action of universities in the past in withdrawing criminal charges after they had initially been presented and I think that institutions of higher education will have to be aware that the community will move into any vacuum created by vacillation. Or ineffective as in university disciplinary procedures. Now lest my brother misconstrue that I missed and misinterpret it. I. Am more sympathetic to his
theory than he probably gives me credit for. I do not believe that repression is the answer to the student on rest problem but I also do not believe that it can be allowed. To run rampant. I do not believe that we can afford as one faculty member said to me at a meeting one time to give the university to the kids. Unless colleges and universities marshal all the intellectual and educational resources at their command and I think this is basically a problem not of repression but of innovative thinking of leadership of courage of taking the initiative of examining everything that we do as though we were just starting to do it instead of accepting what's been done for
a hundred years as good enough for the next hundred. Now I was I was handed quite a pop pouring of unrelated subjects by John Reid which he said it was in his mind at least fitted under this general category of the community and the campus. So if this talk is a little disjointed why you'll know where to lay the blame. And the second point I want to cover is the problem which was covered in part yesterday but. Some of you are not lawyers and may not have got a full comprehension of it. The problems which result from these simultaneously simultaneous pendency of a criminal charge and a university. Disciplinary proceeding against the student based upon the same conduct. That is a student may sit in a big building
with his friends until the police come and carry him out. He's charged with criminal trespass by the police by a university official at the district attorney's office. And when he gets back to the campus there's a letter in his mailbox from the Dean saying that he should report to the dean to discuss the matter of a violation of the university rules against that INS as an aftermath of such demonstrations students increasingly have been charged with both kinds of violations for the same act. Now students have brought litigation on this subject in which they have asked the court for to enjoin the university from proceeding with its disciplinary hearings until the criminal charge. Has been adjudicated on the basis of their application to the court. Is this they say that unless the disciplinary proceeding of the
university is stayed they must go there and testify in their own defense or risk expulsion or suspension or disciplinary probation or some other sanction if they remain silent. On the other hand they say if they testify to save their neck in academia then their testimony may be used against them in the subsequent trial of the criminal charge against them. Well the first case I'm aware of that discussed this was really quite a landmark decision for this and other issues and that was Goldberg against the Regents of the University of California and in that decision the court denied the students a stay of the university's disciplinary proceedings taking note of the fact. That university rules and community criminal codes do not
serve necessarily the same ends or to the extent that they serve the same ends they do so only coincidentally and that the university has an interest in the expeditious completion of disciplinary hearings. The question came up again in the grosser action against the trustees of Columbia University which I handled about a year ago. In the federal court in New York. And there the students complained that they shouldn't even be required to appear before the dean to notify him whether they wish to plead guilty or not guilty or stand mute with respect to the charges. And they again asked the court to enjoin the university from going forward with disciplinary hearings while their criminal trespass charges and other criminal charges were
pending. Well Judge Frankel drew an analogy with the administrative proceedings and he held that there is no requirement that an administrative proceeding having as its subject matter. Something in common with a criminal action the state he cited as an analogy the instance that a motor vehicle commissioner was authorized by statute to suspend a driver's license for speeding does not have to await the outcome of a negligent homicide prosecution before considering administrative action. In his opinion you also see I think that he rather took offense at the fact that the students raised this point at such an early stage in the proceeding by refusing even to appear before the Dean. And that the last most recent case of the one with the unpronounceable name that was
mentioned mentioned a couple days a couple times yesterday for Tani against you and Laban in which a federal court in San Francisco refused to stay the university's tribunals from proceeding on the ground that if the student testified there on the Kampala shut at the risk of being punished for if he failed to do solve that that testimony on the principals you don't see it by the Supreme Court and guarantee against New Jersey would not be admissible in a subsequent criminal action so there was no need to stay the disciplinary proceeding. No the Garraty case involved an attorney general's investigation into some police practices involving the issuance of the administration the traffic laws and some officers were required to testify in the attorney general's investigation where no immunity was available and where if they
took the Fifth Amendment their jobs would be in jeopardy. Subsequently the same officers. Who had testified before the attorney general to preserve their jobs were tried on a criminal charge involving maladministration of the traffic laws and the evidence which they had given before the attorney general was received against them and they were convicted. The Supreme Court reversed that conviction and described the police officer's predicament as leaving them with a choice between the rock and the whirlpool and that at the end of its decision the court said we now hold. The protection of the individual under the 14th Amendment against coerced statements prohibits use in subsequent criminal proceedings of statements obtained under the threat of removal from office and that it extends to all whether they are policeman or other members of a body politic.
What the for a townie case does is take that principle and apply it in the realm of. Just do a university disciplinary hearings. Now the rules which are presently in effect at Columbia permit a student facing both a disciplinary hearing on the campus and a criminal charge to defer to the university hearing. Provided he takes a leave of absence from the university until the criminal case is resolved. I am not aware of any instance in which so far any student has exercised that option. I'd like to come next not to the question this controversial question of the use of police. It involves
a number of factors first of which is a psychological one. Police just are not welcomed on university campuses. As a force for common ating said and I think that this attitude has historical roots and they in that police have in the past been associated with breaking up the efforts of the laboring class to organize and to obtain an improvement in their lot through the use of strikes. I think that the use of police in the civil rights demonstrations in the south which there have been newspaper photographs and pictures telecast of police using cattle pokes dogs and finally the you know.
What many millions of people saw watching television at the Democratic National Convention last summer has pretty well crystallized an attitude. Campuses which is hostile to the use of police and choirs. The New Left movement. Which is so preoccupied with symbols not only in the issues that it attacks but in the acts actions which it takes as exploited the symbol of police brutality with all kinds of epithets involving the police. This is a psychological factor increases the chances that any use of the police. While it may terminate the occupation of a building may bring about more serious problems.
For our experience at Columbia. Last spring was that the use of police resulted. I don't in occasions of excessive force injuries unnecessarily inflicted and these episodes I feel having been rather close to one or more of them are likely to occur regardless of the care which is taken in the planning of the operation. That is not to say that if it becomes necessary to do it on your campus you should not exercise the utmost care in the preparation of such an operation. But something happens when a large body of police confront a highly emotionally charged group of
building occupants in a confined space. The reason fleas and brute force enters the picture. The hysteria and the defiance had the effect of causing the police to do the very things that they were cautioned not to do. Now as people on the campus see students emerging from an occupied building in the grip of a policeman on either side with a police inflicted wound. And witness the police subduing other students or outsiders but nonetheless human beings on the campus. It is quite natural that feelings of revulsion are stirred. It is also very likely
that many people who had not given the new Left movement any support for the issues which brought them into the building may suddenly be galvanized into a very large and effective group on the issue of police brutality. Indeed I think that at Columbia in 1969 and in the right in recent the last month the efforts to sit in conducted by STDs were probably staged for the purpose of attracting police in the hope that the campus could again be radicalized at least for that one purpose. Now last year after. The occupation of buildings at Columbia had been permitted to continue from about the twenty second of April until the twenty
ninth the 30th of April. And it became obvious that something had to be done. University officials made very careful arrangements with the police to minimize the possibility of excesses. But the excesses occurred on the last one and the consequence was that SD ass was able to mount a strike which interfered with the conduct of many classes and caused the cancellation of many final examinations. Now a question inevitably comes up. What is the proper time or circumstance for that for summoning the police to a campus.
And that is one that I'm sure King Solomon cannot answer in all of his wisdom no matter when the decision is taken. There will be responsible and I emphasize that responsible elements on the campus who will disagree with it and whose position will not necessarily be unreasonable. There is no pat answer. Mr Edward collegian member of the New York law firm representing Columbia University speaking at the UN over some poesy M student protest and the law held in mid May. Mr collegian will conclude his remarks next week at this time. This has been special of the week from M E E R the national educational radio network.
Series
Special of the week
Episode
Issue 36-69
Contributing Organization
University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/500-zs2kbx2w
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Description
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No description available
Date
1969-00-00
Topics
Public Affairs
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:29:15
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University of Maryland
Identifier: 69-SPWK-438 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:30:00?
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Citations
Chicago: “Special of the week; Issue 36-69,” 1969-00-00, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-zs2kbx2w.
MLA: “Special of the week; Issue 36-69.” 1969-00-00. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-zs2kbx2w>.
APA: Special of the week; Issue 36-69. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-zs2kbx2w