2008 Woodie Awards
Reader's Forum: Public safety displays 'hostile' attitude at open forum
The SDS Writing Collective
Issue date: 12/7/07 Section: Opinion
- Page 1 of 3 next >
To the Editor:
We are writing in response to the Nov. 30 article "Panelists get earful on rights concerns" covering the Nov. 27 Student Government Association Discussion on Public Safety with Chief Tom Evans, Associate Dean of Campus Life and Student Affairs Frank Merckx, Dean of Campus Life and Student Affairs Dawn Williams and Director of Residence Life Christina Rishiy. We do not feel that the article accurately represented the event or some of the quoted participants.
We would like to begin by stating that the event began with an air of hostility and condescension that set the tone for the rest of the night. Merckx opened the discussion by hanging a poster-size blow-up of the Student for a Democratic Society Know Your Rights flyer in front of the room. He then distributed his own hand-out containing a 34-point list of reactionary commentary meant to correlate with the poster. However, most of his points did not indicate actual fallacies, only inconsequential wording and tone in the document which Merckx took exception with. By presenting his intimidating list of commentary, Merckx created false anxiety over the credibility of the document. Worse yet, he condemned students' only existing one-stop summary of their rights without offering them a clear alternative or even clear clarifications of errors. The verbal "answers" provided at that night's meeting were far from satisfactory, as we will address later.
SDS members have since met with Merckx, who agreed that some of his commentary was overzealous. He also explained the one legitimate discrepancy between SDS's document and his own: the additional sentence at the end of the search and seizure policy which states that Public Safety may search rooms without consent when a plain view or odor violation has occurred. Merckx said the sentence had been added to "Daniel's Dictionary" over the summer and was printed in the hard copies given to incoming freshmen.
It should be noted that the student body was not alerted to this policy change, and upon investigation by SDS members, it was discovered that the PDF of Daniel's Dictionary on the Drew website, which most upperclassmen consult, and which SDS consulted prior to making the handout, was not updated until Oct. 4. The administration was expecting students to know a rule that they only had access to by consulting the most recent hard copy of "Daniel's Dictionary."
We are writing in response to the Nov. 30 article "Panelists get earful on rights concerns" covering the Nov. 27 Student Government Association Discussion on Public Safety with Chief Tom Evans, Associate Dean of Campus Life and Student Affairs Frank Merckx, Dean of Campus Life and Student Affairs Dawn Williams and Director of Residence Life Christina Rishiy. We do not feel that the article accurately represented the event or some of the quoted participants.
We would like to begin by stating that the event began with an air of hostility and condescension that set the tone for the rest of the night. Merckx opened the discussion by hanging a poster-size blow-up of the Student for a Democratic Society Know Your Rights flyer in front of the room. He then distributed his own hand-out containing a 34-point list of reactionary commentary meant to correlate with the poster. However, most of his points did not indicate actual fallacies, only inconsequential wording and tone in the document which Merckx took exception with. By presenting his intimidating list of commentary, Merckx created false anxiety over the credibility of the document. Worse yet, he condemned students' only existing one-stop summary of their rights without offering them a clear alternative or even clear clarifications of errors. The verbal "answers" provided at that night's meeting were far from satisfactory, as we will address later.
SDS members have since met with Merckx, who agreed that some of his commentary was overzealous. He also explained the one legitimate discrepancy between SDS's document and his own: the additional sentence at the end of the search and seizure policy which states that Public Safety may search rooms without consent when a plain view or odor violation has occurred. Merckx said the sentence had been added to "Daniel's Dictionary" over the summer and was printed in the hard copies given to incoming freshmen.
It should be noted that the student body was not alerted to this policy change, and upon investigation by SDS members, it was discovered that the PDF of Daniel's Dictionary on the Drew website, which most upperclassmen consult, and which SDS consulted prior to making the handout, was not updated until Oct. 4. The administration was expecting students to know a rule that they only had access to by consulting the most recent hard copy of "Daniel's Dictionary."
Be the first to comment on this story