Chanting, "Hey Carothers, you're not our mother," about 100 University of Rhode Island (URI) students marched on the schools administration kicking off a week of resistance to new student conduct regulations passed by the faculty senate and signed by URI President Robert Carothers.
In summary, the approved legislation changes will:
• broaden jurisdiction of the student discipline system over off-campus conduct.
• expand current searches to allow limited, visual administrative searches of student residence rooms without the consent of the student but with “concrete evidence” and the approval of the director of housing and residential life.
• grant a complainant the right to submit an appeal request to the University Appeals board within a one-week period based on new evidence.
• allow the vice president for student affairs to approve emergency suspensions.
• change all references from “judicial” to conduct” in student conduct legislation.
"[Carothers] is just doing his job but he's just made a very, very bad decision," protest organizer Micah Daigle told the crowd over a megaphone. He added, "What's in my dorm room is not to be rifled through. I am an adult and a student, I deserve rights."
"I'm here because my rights have been revoked, but I feel this is a great movement and we need to come together and show the administration and those outside in the community that we are adults and we have rights," protester and junior Noel Marandola said. "We're here today, all of us, to express that we have rights and we're not going to lay down and let [the administration] trample them."
President Carothers signed the legislation on Tuesday, Oct. 11. The policies are in effect with the president’s signature, but will not be put into practice until January 2006.
Carothers issued a statement Monday defending changes to the code, writing, "The higher education landscape has changed, and there's a rational and reasonable case to be made for these new policies." Concerns about liability and a desire to build a better relationship with URI's neighbors spurred the revisions, he said.
Carothers added, "We're trying to keep kids out of trouble."
But the “kids” at the protest were unconvinced, saying the changes threaten their freedom from unjustified searches and double jeopardy and open the possibility of harsher or broader interpretation of the handbook's new language at some later date.
"I think it's pretty ridiculous that they're trying to enforce these ridiculous new laws," said Kelly Long, a sophomore quoted in Brown Daily Herald. "They're trying to take away our civil rights guaranteed to us by the United States Constitution."
Erin Philbick, a sophomore and president of URI's chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy, offered similar criticism. "This is not acceptable. We deserve the right to respect," Philbick said. SSDP is part of the Student Rights Coalition, which is made up of 18 groups opposed to the changes.
Cristin Langworthy, one of the protest organizers and a member of the Faculty Senate Student Rights and Responsibilities Committee that drafted the changes, told the student newspaper Good Five Cent Cigar that students would continue to protest. "I think that this is the beginning of student outcry and I think the public and this university are going to be made immediately aware that students are not going to sit down and take this," she said. "The more they ignore us, the more uncomfortable we are going to make them."
Last May, the ACLU sent a letter to the Faculty Senate and Carothers opposing many of the changes and calling them a dangerous precedent.
Today the students plan start an action simply entitled “Call President Carothers!”
They hope to jam the phone lines with demands for student rights! They say to “Call 874-2444 and 874-4462 all week long!”
"This is pretty much ridiculous," said sophomore Chase Altneu. "I don't want to live my life in college being watched -- constantly. This isn't high school. They're treating us like children." Sources: Boston Herald, Rhode Island News, University of Rhode Island, The Brown Daily Herald, Good Five Cent Cigar, Student Rights Coalition
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