The three-member independent panel created to examine an MSU undercover police investigation of a campus activist group will hold its first public hearing Wednesday.

The public is invited to address the panel at the meeting or in writing. The meeting will be held at 6:30 p.m. in the Union Ballroom.

MSU President M. Peter McPherson assembled the panel last week to review the practices and policies of undercover investigations at the Department of Police and Public Safety. In February 2000, MSU police used an undercover officer to investigate Students for Economic Justice, then known as United Students Against Sweatshops.

University officials have said they began the investigation because of concerns after protests turned violent in Seattle in late 1999 and at an anti-sweatshop sit-in at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in February 2000.

Officials said the investigation was continued because concerns were heightened after an April 2000 march in Washington, D.C., turned violent and World Bank President James Wolfensohn was announced to speak at commencement.

The investigation also began to focus on a person being examined in relation to the New Year’s Eve 1999 arson of Agriculture Hall, officials said.

Members of Students for Economic Justice have since been consulting with American Civil Liberties Union attorneys about the case.

The panel consists of Norman Abeles, director of MSU’s Psychological Clinic and the chairman of the Executive Committee of Academic Council; former state Rep. Lynne Martinez, who now serves as the director of the Capital Area Youth Alliance, and former MSU Trustee Russell Mawby, the former chairman of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

The group is expected to issue a report by fall.