U. drops charges against 'DP' confiscators

Highland Park High School '92 Highland Park, Illinois In a highly publicized event, a group calling itself the "Black Community" removed almost the entire press run of the DP on April 15, 1993, shortly after the papers were delivered to distribution sites across campus. A sign posted at the sites said the Black Community was not willing to accept the "blatant and voluntary perpetuation of institutional racism against the Black Community by the DP" and the University. Special Judicial Inquiry Officer Howard Arnold, who was assigned specifically to this case, declared in September that it was unnecessary to take judicial action against the students who participated in the protest. "Ours is an academic community in which mistakes by students must be seen more as opportunities for education than as occasions for punishment," he said. "Ours is a community in need of healing, not of another protracted dispute." He also found that the "Black Community" was really a group of members of the Black Student League, which was found to have organized the protest. Interim President Claire Fagin and Interim Provost Marvin Lazerson said in a joint statement that they accepted Arnold's decision, but warned that any similar actions by students in the future would be subject to "the full range of judicial sanctions." "This action violated long-held principles of freedom of the press and freedom of speech on the University of Pennsylvania campus," they said. "We will respond vigorously to any future violations of those principles." After the initial incident, the Committee on Open Expression found that the removal of the papers was a violation of the University's open expression guidelines. But Arnold said he decided not to discipline the students for a number of reasons, including that the students involved had no reason "to know of the University's Confiscation of Publication on Campus policy since it was not published in the Policies and Procedures manual provided to [all] students." That policy states that people who confiscate publications "should expect to be held accountable" because such actions are "inconsistent" with the University's ideals. Lazerson said the University will assume that all students are familiar with the confiscation policy from now on, because it will be included in all future editions of Policies and Procedures. "We have made very, very clear what the University policy is and we hope that it is a policy that every single person understands," he said, adding that the administration wants to "make it unambiguously clear that restriction of the free expression of ideas as in the confiscation of newspapers is wrong and intolerable." And in a rare public action, the University's Board of Trustees criticized University administrators after Arnold's announcement for not disciplining the students. "In light of our convictions, many of us are not comfortable that charges against those students who confiscated The Daily Pennsylvanian were dropped and agree that all members of the University community from this time forward must be treated equally," the Trustees' Executive Committee said in a statement. During the week of the one-year anniversary of the confiscation, the DP, along with The Vision, an African American monthly student publication, co-wrote a series entitled "On Common Ground: Free Speech and Civility" which examined the complex issues of free speech and civility.

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