It comes as no surprise to MSU Trustee Robert Weiss that police would use undercover officers to gather information about activist groups.
After all, Weiss, who served as the Genesee County prosecutor from 1979 to 1993 and Flint city attorney from 1969 to 1971, has ordered just such an investigation.
“I’ve done that before,” he said. “If it was just a group meeting peacefully and not advocating violence then you pull the person out. I wanted to know if people’s lives were in danger.”
But he’s also seen the other side. Weiss, elected to MSU’s governing body in 1988, said he had such an investigation pointed at him while protesting war in the 1960s.
“I believe in prevention as much as you can, but at the same time I believe in the First Amendment,” said Weiss, adding that law enforcement agencies collected information about him - like many other activists - in extensive files.
“So I know what that’s like, too. And I don’t agree with that.”
Now the university he helps lead is facing heat from students for using covert tactics. For months in 1999, MSU police used an undercover officer to gather information about Students for Economic Justice, a registered student organization.
“I think it’s a major concern and a major reflection of this institution,” said Maximillian Monroy-Miller, a Chicano studies senior and a former president of Culturas de las Razas Unidas.
Police officials said they assigned Officer Jamie Gonzales to infiltrate the group to gather information about possible reactions to a May 2000 commencement speech by World Bank President James Wolfensohn. Several members of the group participated in protests in Seattle and Washington, D.C., in the months before to protest the World Trade Organization, World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Officials say there was no wrongdoing and the officer was pulled out.
MSU President M. Peter McPherson urged Students for Economic Justice to address the investigation with the university’s Police and Public Safety Oversight Committee. The committee of students, faculty and staff members addresses complaints issued against the police department or its employees. But the investigation leaves several leaders of other registered student organizations wondering if they, too, could be the target of police.
“It does concern me,” MSU College Republicans Chairman Jason Ahrens said. “It’s an invasion of privacy and just wrong to do it.”
Ahrens said he’s disturbed campus police would target a student organization and added such action “should not be tolerated.”
MSU police declined to comment further since releasing a written statement Friday to The State News. In the statement, Assistant Chief Jim Dunlap maintains the department acted legally and appropriately.
Ahrens and other students aren’t so sure.
“If they feel they have to be there I guess they can, but it’s not very ethical,” he said.
Kendall Sykes, chairperson of ASMSU’s Student Assembly, agrees. Sykes said he and others in MSU’s undergraduate student government have defended the police department on most occasions to campus groups - he’s not sure what to do now.
“What do we say now? You have undercover cops investigating (registered student organizations) for no reason,” he said. “As a student I’m mad and as a chairperson I’m mad.”
Police departments are often given the legal right to conduct undercover investigations, said Michael J. Steinberg, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan.
But students also have a constitutional right to peaceably assemble.
“The First Amendment implications of such a practice is deeply troubling,” he said. “If students think police are coming to identify them and investigate, it has a chilling effect.”
But not everyone agrees.
MSU Trustee David Porteous, who’s practiced law for more than 20 years, said the university has an obligation to ensure campus safety - even if that means putting undercover agents in student groups.
“This incident was an isolated incident,” he said. “I don’t think it will have any sort of chilling effect on students and their First Amendment rights. A day doesn’t go by when students aren’t talking about issues.”
But MSU College Democrats President Jeanne Raven fears otherwise. Her group has usually only worked with police to set up visits from political figures.
“I think people will always get suspicious now,” she said, saying MSU police could have handled the situation differently. “If they thought there could be a problem with that group they should have taken a direct approach with them rather than planting someone in there.
“If police just stayed in contact with the different student groups and had working relations with them this would not be necessary.”
