I’m writing this in response to a comment on an article in the online edition of The Argus. I want to make it a Wespeak rather than another comment in hopes of reaching more people. The article was about an illegal pool party at the Freeman Athletic Center, after the hour of curfew, when the center had been closed on account of storm Sandy, and the discovery of the party by security, one of whose members gave a partygoer a concussion. When I was a student at Wesleyan, security was provided by University Security Personnel, as they were referred to in the Code for Non Academic Conduct. I’m not up on all the goings on since my time at Wesleyan, but I’ve gathered that the security service is now called the Office of Public Safety, or PSafe. I’m aware from my limited reading in the online version of The Argus that there have been several attacks on students this semester by people from off campus, i.e. non students.

The article that the comment referred to was about a student who was apprehended by officers of PSafe, and who suffered a concussion when one of the officers of PSafe slammed him into the wall of the shower or sauna room. The rationale for this rough treatment was that the student’s identification of himself, by some kind of number, I gathered, didn’t match with any student’s on file. He was also slapped three times in the head or face. In other words the belief was that the person was a non student, from off campus, trespassing on university property, the very sort of person responsible for so many recent attacks.

The commenter (going by the moniker alum ‘98’, or ‘W ‘98?’) said the rough physical treatment given the student by the officer of PSafe should be tolerated because abuse perpetrated by police officers and their counterparts in security happens all the time. There’s nothing special about it. It had even happened to the writer of said comment. He appealed to us to sympathize with how threatened an officer might feel in a situation, because of the broad range of unscrupulous characters he’s likely to encounter on his job. He can’t read everyone’s mind and tell in advance which ones are going to be troublesome and which ones aren’t, so he should be excused if he leads off with a pre-emptive reaction strike. The phrase “preemptive reaction strike” (not used in the article) comes, I believe, from the Nixon administration. The reasoning goes like this: “We could tell this country was going to launch an attack against us, so we decided to carpet bomb the country before it could.” I was never much of a student at Wesleyan, and I may be wrong, but I think this was the excuse given for bombing Cambodia during the Vietnam War. The phrase tortures logic, in that it calls an act a reaction, before anything was done to react to. That’s where the “preemptive” comes in. But to put it simply, it’s a reaction to something imaginary.

There was a pool party. Albeit an illegal one. No one was being attacked, nothing was being stolen, nothing was being vandalized.

In New York City the police took into custody a man named Abner Louima. They took him into a men’s room and took the handle of a plunger or a mop or broom and shoved it up his rectum, causing a range of serious injuries. The officers in question were quoted as having said, “This man’s been Giulianied!” It occurred when Rudy Giuliani, a man referred to as America’s mayor after 9-11, was mayor of New York. The hallmark of his administration was cracking down on crime, and crime went down significantly during his tenure. It started with a no tolerance policy, charging men and women with minor infractions, which led to a large number of people apprehended with outstanding warrants against them. Mr. Louima received a significant damages award for the treatment he suffered, though he may never recover from some of the injuries, and the officers involved faced criminal charges and I believe were found guilty. Not every police officer was doing this to suspects, but there was a culture of impunity, at least by anecdotal evidence, that allowed police officers to rough up their suspects to get the message across that Mayor Giuiliani was tough on crime. The phrase “culture of impunity” comes from a speech made by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton while discussing despots in Africa.

I think when little things that are wrong, like roughing up suspects, (you know, little things, like giving a man a concussion), when these little things become acceptable because they’re commonplace, big things tend to go wrong, too. There’s a tone set at the top of the hierarchy that’s meant to send a message. It sends the message that the administration at Wesleyan is going to be tough on crime. But roughing people up sends another message, too: that crime is okay for men in police or security uniforms, if not for civilians. Indeed sometimes it seems difficult enough for civilians just to be innocent. At least one comment to this article mentioned as much—the harassment he and other students of color had to endure on a regular basis. Gratuitous abuse of students on campus by security services or police is not just an issue at Wesleyan, either. The Constitution guarantees the right of the people to peaceably assemble, yet an entire row of students seated with arms locked together, certainly no threat to anyone, was pepper sprayed by an officer with all the nonchalance of a tick settling in on the hump of a buffalo. (I can’t remember what school this happened at, but it wasn’t Wesleyan.)

Just this past week, I heard from friends—though I haven’t read the reports myself—that a shoplifter was apprehended by a store employee, who was joined by a security guard while they all waited until the police came. The security guard beat the suspect with a baton so severely that he was dead by the time the police arrived. Because roughing up suspects happens all the time.

A friend of mine was arrested with several of his friends for skinny-dipping in a small lake. He and his friends got roughed up by the police and sentenced to 30 days hard labor. It could be difficult having long hair in the South back in the 70s. He’s often been roughed up by the police. He doesn’t make any big deal over it now because it happens all the time. But he said for years he had a chip on his shoulder because of it, because there’s a culture of impunity, of a double standard. But he said he just had to let it go. He laughs about it, now.

Michelle Shocked dedicated a song on her first album to a young graffiti artist, unarmed, who posed such a threat to the police that it took six of them to kill him in the process of arresting him for his art, and let’s let it be said, yes, he was breaking the law. He was spray painting subway cars. Not one of the policemen suffered any disciplinary action. Because there’s a culture of impunity. Because these things happen all the time.

In New York City again, the police were trying to apprehend a young man, from some distance, and he was being ordered and he wasn’t necessarily complying with the orders. Then one of the officers shouted, “He has a gun!” and they opened fire on the suspect, killing him in a hail of 41 bullets. Yet no one ever found the gun the young man was supposed to have brandished. And not one of the officers was punished because they were deemed to have felt legitimately threatened. These things happen all the time. There’s a culture of impunity.

My friend who got roughed up so often never suffered a serious injury or he might have contemplated legal action himself. The black and blue bruises resulting from the beatings he took, he looks back on now as little more than an indignity. He says nothing’s ever going to change. There’s a culture of impunity. These things happen all the time.

Dean is a member of the class of 1977.