At the University of Pennsylvania last fall, someone splashed red paint over a statue honoring the school's founder, Benjamin Franklin.
Within hours, campus workers washed it off. However, the university wanted to find the perpetrator.
Pro-Palestinian groups had alleged responsibility for social media. The university investigated the footage and used data from campus Wi-Fi near the statue to identify the student's mobile number when it was destroyed. Campus police obtained a search warrant for the call record of T-Mobile's call, and later obtained a warrant seizing the phone itself.
At 6am on October 18th, armed campus and city police appeared at the off-campus home of a student who appears to be the phone owner. The neighbor said they held the gun and shed a light on her bedroom window. They then entered the student's apartment and seized his phone, according to police filings.
A few months later, the student has not been charged with a crime.
Penn's investigation remains open and is one of several across the country to rely on more sophisticated technology and police shows to investigate student vandalism and other property crimes related to Palestinian demonstrations. (The student who seized his phone did not respond to the interview request.)
The warrant was first reported by Daily Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, the Penns independent student newspaper that filed the lawsuit after police first failed to file the warrant in district court.
Much of this happened even before President Trump took office. Since then, he has made it clear that he will use his power to force the university to struggle with protests. His administration began to seek to deport protesters, warning 60 universities that they could face penalties from anti-Semitism investigations. At least nine current or former students and one professor who were legally in the US with a visa or green card have already been targeted, and at least one student has been detained on the streets by staff members.
He then borrowed $400 million in funding from Columbia University to tell the school they would not discuss money recovery unless “full law enforcement” was given to campus security agents to arrest students. In response, the university said it had hired 36 “special officers” with its authority.
Civil rights lawyers and legal experts said the move is a fundamental change in the way universities respond to student disciplinary cases. While arrests and searches are already within the authority of many campus police agencies, recent tactics have exceeded what is the standard for campus security guards, said Farhan Heidali, assistant professor of law at Vanderbilt University.
Historically, Haydari said campus police tend to operate at discretion on matters that could affect the future of students. The law will be strictly enforced. For example, campus officials may look the other way around issues such as drinking underages.
If they strictly enforce all the laws, “everyone would be expelled and no one would be allowed by a bar or something,” he added, “that would be scary for the university.”
“Basic Shift”
While widespread protests and tent camps in spring 2024 have subsided, Palestinian parent demonstrations, often continuing peacefully, sometimes involve vandalism. Under pressure from federal officials and community members, many universities are moving to embrace harsher, more sophisticated security tactics to quell the protests.
Some experts worry that tactics could put freedom of speech and civil liberties at risk, especially if students seize their property, even though they are not related to the crime or are not accused of.
“It seems like an expansion of the power of law enforcement agencies that may not have existed 20 or 25 years ago,” said Saira Hussain, senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for protecting civil liberties online.
The university defends tactics and says it is necessary to protect students' safety and combat discrimination. In Penn, the university said a search of apartments is necessary to maintain order and safety.
“Unfortunately, small groups of individuals who may be students are destructive and sometimes continue to act illegally against the university community,” the school said in a statement.
“They continue to downplay policies and laws that they don't think apply to them, and blame their own institutions when they encounter consequences,” the university added. “The law must be enforced uniformly and fairly and is not designed to be exempt when it doesn't fit a particular perspective.”
The New York Times reviewed the documents in seven vandalism cases, including a search warrant to investigate student protesters. One resulted in criminal charges.
In one episode, including Campus Graffiti in November, 12 law enforcement officials searched the families of two sisters, George Mason University students.
Authorities said they found Hamas and Hezbollah flags, as well as other sources showing anti-American rhetoric and expressions showing “death to America” ​​and four weapons and ammunition. However, authorities have shown that the documents and guns belong to other families living in the home, according to court filings.
The two women were banned from campus, but no charges have been filed.
In an open letter to George Mason authorities, 100 faculty members, students, politicians and political groups protested the decision to ban students.
University president Dr. Gregory Washington said the search results suggested that “potentially more evil” was ongoing, according to an email written to faculty members obtained by the Times through a request for public records. He also said the university is actively working with “many three letter institutions that aim to maintain our campus and frankly maintain the security of our country.”
Dr. Washington also posted a public letter, saying the university had no additional comment on the incident.
In a statement, it was generally said that “when a university is required to prohibit students from entering campus or impose a temporary suspension on student organizations, such actions are taken carefully as a precaution to maintain the safety of the university's community environment.”
Privacy concerns
In Penn, a committee review showed that police had acted professionally, following the public's protests over the search. However, this review questioned the possibility that such searches could cause “even discomfort and fear.”
University police may quote social media posts to justify the warrant request. However, the post is a constitutionally protected speech, said Zach Greenberg, amendment counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech group. He said tactics can cool free expression.
Most students involved in surveillance cases were reluctant to talk about their experiences. Many students involved in the protest have exposed their identities and faced harassment.
“I've been doing legal work related to the right to protest for over 35 years, and I've never seen anything of this kind on a university campus,” said Rachel Raderman, senior adviser to the Center for Protest Law and Litigation.
Lederman represents Laaila Irshad, a third-year undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Arshad is asking the court to cancel the warrant that led to the seizure. Almost six months after it was taken, it has not been returned and she has not been charged with a crime.
In the email, Arshad said he felt that police went back when they were in fifth grade and “incredibly exposed” thinking that police could review all the data on the phone.
“From my random messages with friends to my Google search for health issues, to my very intimate messages with my family, everything is open to them,” she writes.
A university spokesman said the warrant is related to an investigation into the ongoing vandalism, but would not explain the vandalism itself.
At least one warrant leads to a criminal case. At Indiana University Bloomington, a life-size sculpture of a former university president, destroyed with red paint, was destroyed on the anniversary of Hamas' attack on Israel.
After checking the security footage, university police obtained a warrant searching for the student's cars and cell phones. Investigators found a photograph of a statue covered in paint and the student was charged with two counts of criminal mischief.
Warrants, but no fees
In some cases, the student is not charged with fraud as a result of a warrant.
In September, three officers from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill University arrived in the dorm room of Laura Cervedora Forello, a senior who regularly participated in the protest. Jerry Miller, a lawyer for Savedra Forello, said he believes officers will target clients because they use wheelchairs that are easier to identify than other students.
They obtained her cell phone and all of its search warrants, claiming it probably contained evidence of vandalism related to the protest. The university said the warrant was related to vandalism at the 10 campus building on September 19, but refused to answer additional questions.
“It's very strange for low-level misdemeanors like graffiti vandalism,” Miller said, “not because UNC has committed a search warrant against its students, but because the student has attended the protest purely and was filmed in that protest.”
Stephanie Saul Reports of contributions.
