First, The September 29th Movement wants to thank the many students, staff, faculty members and alumni who have offered verbal and financial help to us — including several who disagree with our position on the renaming of Carrie Chapman Catt Hall — as we wind our way through Iowa State’s arbitrary, capricious and highly inconsistent judicial fiasco aimed at silencing selected Movement members.

On Nov. 5, the Movement conducted a town meeting in the lobby of Beardshear Hall as an act of civil disobedience after Dean of Students Kathleen MacKay refused our application for a permit. MacKay said at the time Movement organizers faced written reprimands if we went through with the meeting. Previously, the Movement had held two unauthorized meetings — one on the steps of Beardshear — and we didn’t even bother to apply for a permit. We just set up microphones and did our thing. No citations or warnings followed but we were small then, on March 6 and April 11, 1996.

Because the proceedings thus far have taken on a star-chamberlike quality, and because we believe that openness is essential in a democracy, we find it necessary to provide the ISU community with an update on the shenanigans of MacKay, Office of Judicial Affairs (OJA) representative Grace Weigel, et al. (Webster defines a star chamber as “characterized by secrecy and often being irresponsibly arbitrary and oppressive.”)

To date, 16 hearings have been held by Weigel, where most of the defendants faced two charges: holding an unauthorized meeting and refusing to leave when asked by an ISU official. At the outset, Weigel told Black Student Alliance President Meron Wondwosen and myself that she — unilaterally — would not permit open administrative hearings and, further, would not allow our cases to go before an All-University Judiciary (AUJ) hearing board because she wouldn’t “allow you to make a political spectacle of the proceedings.” How’s that for being prejudicial?

The ISU Student Information Handbook 1993-1995, apparently the latest version, says in section III (2) that a student’s rights include “… an open or closed hearing …” Section III (7) reads: “The hearing shall be closed unless the accused requests that the hearing may be open.” Neither section makes a distinction between OJA administrative and AUJ board hearings.

Weigel insists sections III (2) and (7) don’t apply to her OJA star-chamber. Proceedings are closed air-tight and she reigns supreme as judge, prosecutor and jury. Something called the Buckley Amendment allows this insult to democracy, she says, and protects our right to privacy, which apparently we have no say about, although it’s our privacy, not hers.

On the advice of counsel, 15 of the 16 pleaded guilty to one charge — the “unauthorized” town meeting — and not guilty to the second; all but two of the 15 were found guilty of that charge and had the second charge dropped. Central Committee members Renee DeLong and Laura Carrillo were found guilty of both charges. (Don’t ask; we don’t think it made sense either.) All 15, including DeLong and Carrillo, were given written reprimands, the penalty the Movement expected, based on conversations with MacKay prior to the town meeting.

Now it gets interesting. MacKay wrote a letter to Weigel for the 16th defendant, Central Committee member Jamal White, who pleaded not guilty to both charges. Presumably on the strength of MacKay’s letter, he was acquitted for “lack of evidence.” The night before the town meeting, White and other Central Committee members, including myself, met with MacKay and Loras Jaeger, the director of the Department of Public Safety (who recommended that a permit be issued for the town meeting but was overruled). White and I led the march to the town meeting in Beardshear the next day. Lack of evidence, indeed.

It gets more interesting. Rob Ruminski, another prominent Central Committee member, was all over the place at the town meeting helping things run smoothly. There’s no way MacKay could have missed him. He was never charged with anything. Is it because he’s a National Merit Scholar, or is it because he works with a prominent professor who’s a staunch opponent of the Movement’s campaign to rename Catt Hall?

And then there’s defendant Paul Stuckey. His hearing was held Jan. 10, mainly because Weigel didn’t have the professionalism to tell Stuckey that Movement attorneys Maggi Moss and Matthew Boles had met with her the day before and postponed the hearings of the remaining eight defendants, including him.

Stuckey, a doctoral candidate, had been studying and missed a voice mail message telling him he didn’t have to go. He showed up, Weigel tried him, and her erratic decision making blossomed into full flower.

Stuckey fiercely believes the charges, in his words, “are bogus,” and insisted on pleading not guilty to both charges. In that case, Weigel said, he was guilty of both charges, although he’s totally absent from her videotape, the primary evidence she uses in the OJA star-chamber.

In other words, Stuckey’s guilty of both charges because she said so. Of further significance is Weigel’s comment to Stuckey that the charges initially seemed “iffy” to her upon first viewing the videotape, but she went ahead with the hearings because she was ordered to do so.

Stuckey received a reprimand and has appealed because he wants an AUJ hearing. (Remember now, Weigel said ahead of time that AUJ hearings are a no-no.) The OJA (read Weigel) has invented a pre-hearing hearing for Stuckey on Jan. 31 to see if he can have a hearing. Weigel told Stuckey he didn’t really need an adviser with him and she didn’t tell him if the AUJ pre-hearing hearing could be open; you know, just show up and let them continue the star-chamber deal. There’s not a word about this pre-hearing hearing procedure in the handbook.

One last thing you should know. Four of the remaining eight untried defendants have three charges against them, mainly, we’re told, because of speeches made at the town meeting.

Three of the other four are prominent student leaders and also quite vocal, but the OJA screwed up and only placed two charges against them. On Jan. 9, Moss, our attorney, asked ISU officials to agree to give all eight defendants reprimands because they were as guilty as the rest, but no more so. ISU officials apparently already have conduct probation or worse in mind for them because they declined Moss’ request. If they already have their minds made up, why even bother with hearings?

Conduct probation prohibits a student from holding positions such as GSB senator, presidents of various student groups, and so on. When this all started, MacKay advised us against getting an attorney because, she said, our infractions and the punishment would not be all that serious. Yeah, right.

We expected punishment; it comes with civil disobedience because you’re usually trying to expose an unjust system that has unjust laws, policies, or in some other way behaves unreasonably. The ISU system is much worse than we thought. The AUJ may be misnamed, because it also works differently at the faculty/staff level when the university wants to protect a distiguished professor of political science (or the former head of the Research Park, or their former Affirmative Action director).

Maybe the All-University Judiciary really isn’t that at all, something meant for all of the university. Maybe it’s just meant to silence students who work to educate the ISU community, students who practice the principles of Martin Luther King Jr., Henry David Thoreau and Mahatma Ghandi when top administrators, like President Martin Jischke, behave unreasonably.

Free the Beardshear Eight!

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Milton McGriff is a senior in English from Ames. He is spokesman for The September 29th Movement.