West Chester University Faculty Senate Resolution
Whereas the USA Patriot Act ("Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism") of 2001 along with the Homeland Security Act and related Executive Orders and Justice Department directives threaten the students, faculty and staff of campuses across the United States in several areas: Privacy of records, campus police cooperation with the FBI, surveillance, academic freedom, and immigrants' rights;
Whereas under the Patriot Act and other governmental actions, federal authorities, and campus police forces have been able to monitor political and religious activities on campuses and investigate student, faculty and staff backgrounds and activities and under the guise of terrorism investigation, campus police may search rooms and offices without notification to the suspects;
Whereas the Patriot Act gives law enforcement expanded authority to obtain library records, and prohibits librarians from informing patrons of monitoring of information requests; and schools and libraries must turn over borrowing and sales records on individuals to the FBI or other law enforcement agencies without reporting that they have done so;
Whereas under the Patriot Act, colleges and universities may be permitted to monitor e-mail and internet communications, and law enforcement agents may employ video surveillance to track and record an individual's activities on campus without judicial authorization;
Whereas under this climate, colleges and universities may institute policies that restrict when and where students, faculty and staff may rally, protest, or speak about certain issues; colleges and universities may sanction students or faculty for written or spoken commentary; and the government or academic institution may institute policies that prohibit research and writing on certain topics in the interests of national security;
Whereas under the climate fostered by the Patriot Act and other restrictive legislation, immigration law and regulations now require colleges and universities to compile records for all international students and enter them into an USICS data bank; all non-citizen men over the age of sixteen from a specific list of mainly Arab and Muslim nations are required to participate in special registration with the USICS; and, of those who have registered, some have been arrested without specific warrant, held without access to a lawyer and/or deported without the right to a hearing, while students from some countries have been denied visas to return to school after visits home;
Whereas the cumulative effect of the Patriot Act and other elements of the 'war on terrorism' may violate the Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution by establishing secret military tribunals, and by subjecting citizens and non-citizens to indefinite detention without being allowed an attorney, without being brought to trial and without being charged with a crime; and these measures may violate the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution through the expansion of the government's ability to wiretap telephones, monitor e-mail communications, survey medical, financial and student records, and secretly enter homes and offices without customary administrative oversight or without showing probable cause;
Therefore, be it resolved that we the faculty of West Chester University, who value differences in political, religious and cultural expression, call upon the Administration of the University, the Mayor and police of West Chester, and the leaders of other institutions of higher learning in the Delaware Valley to work together to ensure that governmental actions against terrorism do not violate the Constitution and do not compromise individual liberties, research, education, and academic freedom, and to resist all attempts to do so.
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