After Anti-Militarist Protest

D.A. Drops Charges, UofC Threatens Ban Against SYCer

(Young Spartacus pages)

On the morning of April 5 all charges were dropped against Jeremy Cohan, Ben Fink, and two supporters of the Spartacus Youth Club, Tom Discepola and Brian Stapleton, who were arrested at the University of Chicago (U of C) on February 21 for protesting Marine recruiters and the U.S.’s neocolonial occupation of Iraq. The university was forced to drop all charges and threats of disciplinary action by a successful campaign that was initiated and led by the SYC to defend the arrested protesters.

The SYC collected more than 40 endorsements for a united-front defense rally from individuals and organizations spanning a broad spectrum of political perspectives. The SYC shaped the widespread outrage against the arrests into a successful protest in defense of the protesters. During this campaign, we refuted a variety of slanders, including the outright lie by the campus newspaper, the Chicago Maroon, that the Spartacus Youth Club “escalated the protest and created a dangerous environment” (24 February). On March 8 over seventy students and U of C faculty stood together in demanding: “Drop all charges against the anti-military recruitment protesters now! Administration hands off! No disciplinary actions!” (see “Drop Charges Against Anti-Military Recruitment Protesters!” WV No. 867, 31 March).

It is a substantial victory that the university was forced to back down from its assault on the free speech rights of students and activists. However, the fight is not over. We recently learned that the university administration is attempting to ban SYC supporter Brian Stapleton from setting foot on campus. We print below an April 29 letter from the Chicago SYC to University of Chicago vice president Stephen Klass protesting the threatened ban.

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Our supporter, Brian Stapleton, has informed us that he received a letter from you, in your capacity as Vice-President and Dean of Students in the University of Chicago, prohibiting him from entering the campus and any and all university property and threatening him with arrest for criminal trespass should he violate your ban. We note that you do allow him access for medical treatment to the University of Chicago Hospitals but are somewhat puzzled by your concern for the physical well-being of this twenty-year-old. As you point out this is Brian’s punishment for his “disruptive” behavior at the 2/21 demonstration against Marine recruiters on the campus, behavior for which he and three others were arrested by your cops.

Having been forced to drop your charges against the four by the mobilization of those who saw these arrests as an attack on the rights to assemble and protest protected by the U.S. Constitution, you now promise to exert your authority as a landlord against Brian as an outsider (as you are aware there is no similar ban against the three others who were students). This is an old tactic that was used extensively during the civil rights era, as Northern activists who came to the South to fight against Jim Crow segregation were branded as “outside agitators.” This is certainly consistent with the U of C’s past practice when it used its landlord status to clear the Hyde Park area of its poor and mostly black tenants while cleansing the area of such social gathering spots where students, to their benefit and pleasure, could mix with those who could impart a certain urban sophistication. Far from acquainting your students with the world, you maintain and seek to enforce their separateness as you train them to be America’s leaders.

The most revolting feature of your letter is the ersatz gentility with which you promote your “right” to defend your wards against disruption. Could this be the same U of C that provided its then star economists, Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger, as advisors to the vicious Chilean military dictatorship of General Pinochet, who now seeks to avoid the courts of Chilean justice that are attempting to prosecute this murderer of thousands of workers and leftists? That you share more than advisors with Pinochet is demonstrated by your assertion of dictatorial powers over who says what and of what, how and where it is said.

We do not acknowledge your assertion of such powers, with respect to Brian or to any others who would exercise their constitutional rights on the U of C or on any university “property” and will do all in our ability to fight such political repression. As a first step, we will circulate this letter and associated materials to all who endorsed our united-front rally that resulted in the charges against the four being dropped and, additionally, seek its publication and availability for a wider audience. You are, perhaps, aware that we call for the nationalization of all private universities under student, worker and faculty control as a democratic measure to provide higher education to all and control to those who, in fact, make up the university. Were this to be realized at the U of C, it would have the additional benefit of allowing residents, particularly those on Chicago’s South Side to access the many opportunities available in Hyde Park without the interference of your police-statelet forces.