FEAR FACTOR

Our View: University Police must exercise extreme caution in using
Facebook to crack down on campus crime.

Without a doubt, University Police have a job: keep our campus safe
and do their best to prevent illegal activities. While Students for
Sensible Drug Policy feels the police do not have a right to go
undercover and get information on students via resources such as
Facebook, we have to acknowledge the police have a right to use every
resource legally available to them in order to combat illegal activities.

However, it is also essential to keep in mind that these sneaky
tactics do not create a better atmosphere of cooperation between
students and University Police but rather drive a wedge further
between the two. These actions by the police create a lack of trust
among students toward police, calling into question whether police and
students share the same paths toward increased safety and crime prevention.

Are the police officers going undercover on Facebook doing the
university a service? Probably not. Seeking out students assumed to be
engaging in illegal activities based on their Facebook interests and
group connections tells the student body no one is safe from guilt by
association. Consider a student who has never smoked marijuana but
joins a SSDP Facebook group. Should this student now worry he is under
police surveillance? This may be a limited situation, but, as the
saying goes, we're on a slippery slope that is truly Orwellian in its
approach.

What seems perfectly conceivable based on the tactics reported in
today's issue of The Diamondback, as well as other tactics used to
discover and break up underage drinking parties in the past, is that
University Police are on a mission. And that mission is to dispel any
notion that the university is a party school. Combined with stringent
Resident Life-imposed consequences that boot students from dorms for
possessing pot (which SSDP and NORML Terps have been fighting for more
than a year), it's clear that university administrators have narrowed
their view of the kinds of students they want on this campus.

Criminality should never be condoned, but college students being
college students is something else entirely. Consequences imposed as a
result of underhanded tactics, and stringent, unbending policies are
not likely to change the actions of students anytime soon. We urge the
administration to order University Police to ease up on the crackdown
and begin concentrating on prevention efforts.

While we recognize the right of police to use every means possible to
combat illegal behavior, we question whether they reserve these
tactics for the worst offenders and whether their efforts have any
impact on the real scourges on our community: robbery, burglary and
the notoriously underreported acquaintance-rape. Changing this
university's mild reputation as a party school shouldn't translate to
imposing harsh consequences on students whose punishment in the
criminal courts would likely be no more than probation for first time
offenders. It means keeping the campus safe from those who abuse and
overindulge. If police do not relax their aggressive tactics, they
risk losing the trust of students and their position as a partner in
the community.