About 150 students at SUNY New Paltz held a protest yesterday, the latest salvo in the years-long controversy over the campus judicial procedure.

The protest centered around the ongoing and predictable tendency of campus police to conduct searches of dorm rooms, persons, and vehicles on campus. Police say that the searches are legal and have recently taken to obtaining explicit written consent, but the students say that the police are deceptive and intimidating.

“Students are tricked and scared into giving consent because the cops tell them that they’ll be kicked out of school,” said Gilbert Maldonado through a small megaphone. Maldonado said that two of his friends had been subject of the judicial procedure already this year.

More than dozens of students shared stories of searches or of the judicial procedure that their friends or they themselves had experienced.

The campus judicial procedure has been the subject of massive controversy, including a major scandal that rocked the SUNY Administration two years ago.

Last year, during a similar protest, three officers of the campus judicial committee walked into the Haggerty Administration Building and demanded that Student Affairs follow the written procedures of the student handbook. David Rooney, the Vice President of Student Affairs whose future remains uncertain after telling faculty members that he was “looking for an opportunity to get rid of” three student leaders, produced an opinion from a SUNY lawyer that SUNY was not required to follow their procedures in all cases.

Former student body Presidents Justin Holmes, R.J. Partington III, and Jessica Coleman attended the protest. Holmes addressed the crowd (Video of his speech on his blog), telling them to find new and creative nonviolent tactics to seek policy change.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 5:09 pm and is filed under Campus, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.