At a hearing last Friday, the Committee on Student Life (CSL) reduced disciplinary sanctions imposed by the Dean of Students' Office on two students involved in an October confrontation at the cannon.
After the incident, senior Sam Dangremond, editor-in-chief of The Primary Source, filed charges claiming that three other students assaulted him while he was guarding the cannon. The alleged assailants, juniors Adam Carlis, Lou Esparza, and Liz Monnin, also filed a complaint with the Dean of Students' Office, saying that Dangremond assaulted them when they attempted to add a symbol of peace to the Source's American flag design.
A Deans of Students judicial panel found Carlis, Esparza, and Monnin guilty of assault (CORRECTION: The students were found guilty of harassment.) and put them on Probation I. Although Probation I does not appear on a student's record, the student can be placed on Probation II if future behavior "[breaches] the standards of the community" and a notation is added to their transcript.
Carlis and Monnin appealed the decision on its disciplinary severity and the fairness of the hearing. The CSL unanimously found the original hearing fair, but voted 5-3 to take the students off of probation and give them a warning instead.
"The [Dean of Students] panel did the best that they could, and it was a fair hearing," CSL member Amanda Berkowitz said. "We just felt [the punishment] was a bit severe. We felt it more fair to change it to a warning. We did agree it was harassment, but it wasn't as simple as one person harassing another."
Berkowitz was the lone undergraduate member of the CSL to take part in the decision. The CSL is composed of six faculty members, five undergraduates, and one graduate student, but four of the five undergraduates recused themselves from the decision.
Dangremond, who was present at the open hearing, is one of those undergraduates. He later said the sentence reduction is "outrageous" and the new punishment "entails nothing."
"I was upset in the first place when they were only put on Probation I but this is just ridiculous," he said. "I think the five members of the CSL should be ashamed of what they've done...With this vote, a committee at this University has really sanctioned the use of violence against conservatives."
The vote also demonstrates that the CSL is not connected to campus life, he added. "The five members of CSL just have no concept of how their actions affect the students," he said. "When professors live in such an insulated bubble that they don't even know what the cannon traditions are, they're ignorant of how students live on this campus."
Although her sentence was reduced, Monnin said she was confused by the decision. "They maintained that we're guilty of harassment, but took away the punishment," she said. "I'm a little perplexed by that."
Esparza said he was too busy to appeal the decision, but said he was disappointed that by deeming the previous hearing fair, the panel once again absolved Dangremond of assault.
