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I asked him where he’d been all these weeks and he gave me a completely unexpected answer: ‘in jail.’
BROCKLESBY
THE FROSH
24 September ’99
1 October ’99
12 November ’99
19 November ’99
28 January ’00
4 February ’00
18 February ’00
25 February ’00
3 March ’00
24 March ’00
7 April ’00
14 April ’00
The five articles that remain were so skimpy as to provide little more than a mockery of the once-great Bill that would have secured student prerogatives hither and yon.
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COMMENTS ON THE PASSING PARADE
Fear and Tyranny at Holy Cross
By Michael J. Ballway
CRUSADER STAFF WRITER
H
e returned with news of the horrible fight being waged outside of Holy Cross' gates, with a battle-hardened, jaded outlook, and with a new sense of worldliness that hadn't existed when he'd enrolled at here in August. The war was being fought here in Worcester and our own leaders could not muster the tools with which to fight it. It had been an uneventful month of life here at Holy Cross. I'd been eating lunch with some new friends - classmates from my 10:00 "20th-Century History of Minority Perspectives in North American Women's Novels" class - and adjusting to the cold, hard life of a sophomore whose freshman groupie had forsaken him for real friends. Suddenly, however, he was standing there at the table. We sat. I asked him where he'd been all these weeks and he gave me a completely unexpected answer: "In jail." In jail, huh? I couldn't think of anything that Joey would do to merit a month behind bars. Sure, he drank sometimes, but don't we all? And I'd never heard of an alcohol arrest turning into that long of a stay in Worcester's finest accommodations. Yet Joey Brocklesby, the world's cheeriest and most beloved Hanselmaniac aught-three, had spent a month in the city hoosegow, separated from society by metal bars and WPD of every stripe. The horrors! Joey passed the lunch time recounting how he'd been minding his own business in a Caro Street apartment when (his words) "jack-booted five-O" had busted in and arrested him. They detained him overnight. That overnight had turned into a day, a couple of days, a week, a fortnight, and now a month. A few days ago they released him on good behavior and given him a stern lecture on why, as a minor, he was supposed to stay away from dangerous substances like alcohol. "The Commonwealth of Massachusetts just wants to look after your own best interest," the boys in blue had told him, "we arrested you to show you that you're not old enough to make decisions that can result in your becoming addicted to something that can eventually cause your own downfall. Oh, and by the way, you're eighteen, right? The Commonwealth thinks you should buy a Lottery ticket. Jackpot's fourteen million dollars to a lucky winner!" Happy to finally leave the lockup, Joey returned to Holy Cross this week. He's now avoiding the cop-infested parties of Caro; all of his alcohol consumption these days is taking place in the privacy of his own dorm room. He was at one of these get-togethers ("room parties" is a festive term, yes, but the stigma that Mr. Carskaddan has attached to it frightens poor Joey) and one of his semi-inebriated friends noted that his (Joey's) habeas corpus had been violated. After a round of questioning and a round of scotch, my young friend arrived at the conclusion that, indeed, he had never been informed as to the charges against him. Joey hadn't been told he was in jail for alcohol until a month after his incarceration. That's very inconsiderate of the City of Worcester, wouldn't you say? To leave him in jail for a month without him knowing why he was there? As Joey was relating this to me over our succulent, lovingly-prepared Corned Beef Ruebens, he suddenly burst out, "thank God for the Student Bill of Rights." I had heard murmurs and grumblings of some supposed Bill floating around campus, but unfortunately the legions of involved, campus-oriented, politically-active Crusaders had managed to avoid me. Or I them. In any event, Joey confidently proclaimed that "when we pass the Student Bill of Rights, cops won't be able to get away with that stuff anymore. Detaining suspects without formally arresting them will be against the law! I was quite psyched about the prospect of a document that would prevent the government from exploiting its power to harass normal college students such as ourselves. Perhaps this sort of power could even stop a reelection-campaigning Mariano (although nobody was holding his breath for that farfetched possibility). At least it would stop some of the more blatant abuses. I found a young lady who was willing to admit to being part of UCFC -- the United Coalition for Change that has authored the Student Bill of Rights -- and asked her whether habeas corpus was covered. "Hay-bees what?" she asked. Habeas corpus, I answered. Finding no affirmative answer, I tried a different tack. What about due process? "No, I don't think that's in there either," she answered. Right to bear arms? Right to trail by jury? Freedoms of press, religion, speech, assembly? "None of those," she answered. "But look here, at Article I -- you get the right put posters up in Hogan, anywhere you want." I suppose this was a sort of freedom of press, but it seemed somewhat less grandiose. Dejected, I slunk back to my room and slept lightly, knowing that my rights would still be uninsured even if the Student Bill of Rights were passed. The sleep of the hunted is not an easy rest. Every few minutes I awoke, startled, wondering if the next moment would bring an armed penetration by Worcester's Finest in riot gear. Fortunately, my dorm was spared -- that night. At lunch I reported my sad findings to Joey. I told him that his basic human liberties would not be guaranteed by the Student Bill of Rights. Joey took the information well. "I suppose we have lived in a police state so long, we can surely endure a few more years," he said. "I'll be fine. Whatever does not kill me, makes me stronger." Holy Cross just wasn't the same that day. The two of us were looking over our shoulders whenever we were outside, running from shadows, and we felt naked without weapons to defend ourselves. I'm pretty sure it was because of our discovery of totalitarianism here in America, although it might have been due to Dorm Assassins. Our third day on the run was destined to be our last -- Joey came to lunch that day with a bright face and the demeanor of a newly freed man. "I've got great news," he told me. "You know all that stuff that we were talking about, that wasn't in the Student Bill of Rights?" You mean the checks on fascism, I responded. "Right, that stuff. Well, it's all in this other Bill of Rights, which is in the U.S. Constitution," he responded. No kidding. I looked it up in one of my Poli Sci-major friends' books: indeed, it was all there. Plus some stuff about double jeopardy, which if I read it correctly will somehow, someday, get Alex Trebek into a lot of trouble. Needless to say, we were thrilled. No longer would we be tormented by visions of National Guardsmen breaking down our dorm windows to whisk us off to some high-security brig. Yet as we began to ponder our newly-discovered freedoms as U.S. citizens, Joey wondered aloud what exactly this Student Bill of Rights would add to the mix. "Specifically," he said, pointing at a printout of the Bill that he'd obtained at a Wednesday-night rally, "I don't see anything in here that prevents the FBI from rooting through my socks-and-beer drawer. Where's that guaranteed?" Calm down, I told him. That's already covered in the U.S. Bill of Rights. We don't need further protection from tyranny in Washington. This Bill was designed to repel tyranny in Fenwick - or at the very least, to force the administration to actually talk to us kids about its future plans for its (shouldn't that be our?) school. Included are regulations forcing the administration to keep students abreast of the latest changes in school policy -- before they take effect. Greater student inclusion in the decisionmaking process. Openness on the part of the administration as it relates to letting the students know which bureaucrat has control over what (and how to get in contact with him). A reaffirmation of the primacy of student needs with regards to so-called "student living" areas such as Hogan and the dorms. And, of course, the long-anticipated right to put up posters wherever we want in Hogan. Seriously, though, I thought that this document would actually do a lot of good in terms of bringing the students -- who have a large, thirty-thousand-dollar, stake in the rules and policies of this school -- into the deliberative process here on campus. Joey thought that in some of its mandates the Bill went too far, but he decided it wasn't worth arguing. We eagerly anticipated the passage of the Bill of Rights into reality until we were hit with this shocker last Monday: that wonderful, poster-guaranteeing document that we'd all come to know and love had been altered, changed, transformed, bastardized. The five articles that remain were so skimpy as to provide little more than a mockery of the once-great Bill that would have secured student prerogatives hither and yon. When the UCFC first produced the original document, they did so with the attitude of -- their words -- "ask for the world [and] you'll get a country." They overstated their case. Now, they purposely understate their desires: "We present the following as the minimal requirements . . . a starting point" (emphasis added). The new document makes the same general points as the old one -- the campus exists primarily for students; the administration should be more open about its decisionmaking, etc. -- but fails to take them the extra step beyond that the old Bill of Rights did. In other words, this new proposal is heavy on ideas and light on practical solutions. Joey said that this was probably because the specifics in the original plan were controversial or farfetched; I'm not sure, but I told him to find consolation in the fact that even in the original Bill of Rights, some of those amendments are short and vague. The final fate of the Student Bill of Rights is in the UCFC's and, ultimately, the administration's hands. The SGA recently voted to endorse the "spirit of the document" (whatever that means). The Bill's proponents will propose it to the folks who run this school and we'll see what happens to our supposed mini-totalitarianism here on the Hill. In the meantime, Joey and I will be running from building to building, hiding from the sinister forces that pursue us and dodging as many bullets as we can. Though this may not be a true police state, the two of us still have to contend with our Dorm Assassins. This article, which was originally titled "Living in Fear," ran on pages 12 and 14 (second and fourth pages of Features section) of the 24 September 1999 Crusader. The inside headline was "Ballway Boldly Blasts Battered Bill." |