The Office of Judicial Affairs’ star chamber proceedings (as Milton McGriff accurately described them) have been crazy in recent weeks. Some students have been acquitted, some have received disciplinary reprimands and some have received conduct probation.

I’ve seen a videotape of the Nov. 5 meeting. I fail to see how the “organizers” can receive all sorts of different punishments. Jerry Lamsa of the physics department has a videotape of the whole ordeal and he can be reached at 294-4112.

If a student waves his right to privacy (as many of those charged have done), then the proceedings should be open to the public. Then people can see for themselves whether justice is being served.

An article about Iowa State’s court system can be found in the Jan. 30, edition of the Campus Reader. In that article judicial affairs coordinator Grace Weigel said “in a criminal court the outcome is punishment and at a university the goal is education, a change in behavior to keep students here.”

I see very little education and a lot of arbitrary punishment going on due to the Nov. 5 meeting. If Weigel really wants to educate, why doesn’t she explain to the public how students can break the same rules and get different punishments.

Interim director of university relations John Anderson has correctly stated that the university community would understand the OJA decisions if the public had access to the evidence.

I’m not even sure to what extent the students should be punished for the Nov. 5 meeting. To some extent they may have broken time, place and manner rules and whatnot, but I’m not exactly sure what the laws are about this, and it would be a great service to the public to have the courts open so this could all be explained. From the videotape the meeting looked to be orderly and well-behaved and the participants were constantly warning people not to block the stairways. The meeting was held during the noon hour, when there isn’t all that much business to disrupt in Beardshear Hall.

It’s clear that some very shady “justice” has taken place in the last few weeks. So what can we do about all this?

Students, faculty and staff should realize that “an injury to one is an injury to all,” as the Industrial Workers of the World expression of solidarity goes. We’re not going to sit back and let star chamber judicial proceedings continue. Today the rights to open hearings of the Beardshear Eight are violated, and tomorrow it could be your own rights that are violated.

So here are a couple ideas of how we can stop this injustice.

1. If Grace Weigel wants to play the secrecy game then maybe we can too. Let’s get all 24,000+ students together for a secret closed- door meeting in Cyclone (soon to be Jack Trice) Stadium. At this meeting we’ll decide we’re all going to simultaneously drop out of school. Then Weigel will come to us and ask, “Why are you all dropping out?” We’ll simply reply by saying, “We’re not going to tell you because we don’t want you to make a political spectacle out of the whole thing.” (If Weigel can use this excuse then we can too.)

2. Let’s have a general strike for a week or so. Students and professors can boycott classes and university employees can stop working. Let’s just shut the damn place down. Why not? If we can’t learn that justice requires open judicial hearings then what’s the point of it all?

If either of these two scenarios is played out, I think the powers that be will get the message. We’ll get extensive local and national media coverage. We’ll show the world that the Iowa State community believes in access to information, which is essential in a democracy worthy of the name. Then again, these two scenarios are probably just the wishful thinking of a columnist who’s gone insane. It’s hard enough to organize 200 people on an issue, let alone the thousands that these types of actions would require. If any of you still have any sanity, please e-mail me some better ideas at [email protected].

Drew Chebuhar is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Muscatine.