Two separate sets of undercover police investigation guidelines for MSU likely will be consolidated on Friday.
The University Committee on Student Affairs has been developing guidelines for undercover police investigations since MSU President M. Peter McPherson requested them last fall.
Committee Chairperson Jeff Ziarko said he asked university administrators to draft a version of the guidelines after the committee created its own set. Ziarko said he wants a variety of suggestions to work with when the committee creates a final document.
Student government and university officials are writing the guidelines in response to an undercover MSU police investigation beginning about February 2000 into the student group United Students Against Sweatshops, now called Students for Economic Justice.
The committee - which has seven student members and four faculty members - will focus on the set of guidelines they created and add portions of the administration’s guidelines, Ziarko said.
Committee members originally would not release the documents during a public meeting of ASMSU’s Student Assembly, but both sets were released to The State News by Monday evening.
“We are going to do some writing, and take the best of both documents and put it into a single document,” said Ziarko, who also is the director of undergraduate governmental and budgetary affairs for the undergraduate student government.
Although Ziarko said a set of guidelines will likely be approved in about a month, he is unsure about how the committee will combine the two sets of guidelines.
Ziarko said committee members agreed with some points university officials made, including placing a four-month time limit on undercover police investigations. The administration version includes more detailed steps and recommendations.
“To some extent, I am going blind on this,” Ziarko said. “The members of the committee are probably going to have their own thoughts on how they are going to proceed. The committee feels they are not under any obligation to accept the administration’s suggestions, but there are things they like very much.”
Student committee member Jared English said there are good and bad points to both documents. But, English said he didn’t want to comment on other specific points because the documents were not finalized when they were released.
“I am for it as long as the undercover investigation has clear goals and objectives, and the scope of the investigation doesn’t change,” said English, an ASMSU Academic Assembly James Madison College representative. “The government should be very transparent, but right now we are trying to get a working document. It should have been open to public criticism when we were closer to a final draft.”
Committee adviser Lee June, vice president of student affairs, said he offers his opinions to the committee, but wouldn’t talk about it publicly until there is a final document.
“There has been careful consideration of the issues, and we’ll see what happens with the final document,” June said. “At this point it would be premature. We did not want broad distribution of the document, but it’s not a secret.”
June said the committee is trying to established a guideline point that would clarify how investigation records should be kept. Because there are possible legal ramifications about how to keep the records, June said public input should be limited.
June also said he is confident there will be a final document that the public will be invited to discuss.
“If we didn’t do that, I think we would have failed in our responsibility, and I don’t like to do that too often,” he said.
Alison Barker can be reached at barkera6@msu.edu.
