Universities and the Police: Force and Freedom on the Campus

Abstract

In the beginning the student attacks the university. In the end he demands amnesty. He does so because his target, the bureaucratic multiversity, remains underneath it all alma mater-protector as well as enemy; source of rights, privileges and immunities as well as oppressor. Traditionally, in America, the relation of the university to its students has been in loco parentis. Has its heritage transformed the university into a sanctuary that confers immunities and exemptions, or at least protection from sanctions upon the academic community? Are tht: students wrong in expecting freedom from police interference? When the police penetrate the campus, are they comparable to an invading army? A limited right of sanctuary emerged in the medieval universities of Bologna, Paris, and Oxford as a concession wrested from the civil authorities by militant contingents of scholars from many lands, various classes, and divergent cultures. In Bologna, lacking civil rights and consigned to second-class status, they banded together for protection in guilds and "nations." At last, victors in armed clashes with the townspeople, swift to resort to the threat of a strike or an economic boycott, they acquired substantial power within the university and over the city as well.