Surveillance videos and search warrants: How US colleges are cracking down on students now

NEW YORK - Last autumn at the University of Pennsylvania, someone splattered red paint on a statue honouring Benjamin Franklin, the school’s founder.

Within hours, campus workers washed it off. But the university was eager to find the culprit.

A pro-Palestinian group had claimed responsibility on social media. The university examined footage and identified a student’s cellphone number using data from the campus Wi-Fi near the statue at the time it was vandalised.

Campus police obtained a search warrant for T-Mobile’s call records for the phone, and later a warrant to seize the phone itself.

On Oct 18 at 6am, armed campus and city police appeared at the off-campus home of a student believed to be the phone’s owner. A neighbour said they shined lights into her bedroom window, holding guns.

Then they entered the student’s apartment and seized the student’s phone, according to a police filing. Months later, he has not been charged with any crime.

The Penn investigation, which remains open, is one of several across the country in which universities have turned to more sophisticated technology and shows of police force to investigate student vandalism and other property crimes related to

pro-Palestinian demonstrations

. (The student who had his phone seized did not respond to an interview request.)

The warrants were first reported by The Daily Pennsylvanian, Penn’s independent student newspaper, which filed a lawsuit after police did not initially file the warrants with a local court.

Much of it happened even before US President Donald Trump returned to office. Since then, he has made clear that he will use his power to

force universities to take a hard line on protests

.

His administration has warned 60 universities that they could face penalties from investigations into anti-Semitism, and has also begun seeking to deport protesters.

At least nine current or former students and one professor who were legally in the US with visas or green cards have been targeted, with at least one student being detained on the street by officials in plainclothes.

And

it pulled US$400 million (S$536.4 million) in funding from Columbia University

, telling the school that it would not discuss restoring the money unless, among other things, campus security agents were given “full law enforcement authority” to arrest students.

In response, the university said it had hired 36 “special officers” with that authority.

Civil rights lawyers and legal experts said the moves were a fundamental shift in the way universities respond to student disciplinary cases. While arrests and searches are often within the authority of many campus police agencies, recent tactics go beyond what has been the standard for campus security officers, said Vanderbilt University assistant professor of law Farhang Heydari.

Historically, Prof Heydari said, campus police have tended to operate with discretion on matters that could affect students’ futures, in some cases not strictly enforcing the law.

Campus officers might look the other way on matters such as underage drinking, for example.

If they enforced every law strictly, “everyone would be expelled, no one would be admitted to the bar or whatever”, he said, adding, “That would be horrible for the university.”

A fundamental shift

The widespread protests and tent encampments of spring 2024 have subsided, but pro-Palestinian demonstrations have continued, often peacefully but sometimes including acts of vandalism.

Under pressure from federal officials and community members alike

, many universities have moved to embrace tougher and more sophisticated security tactics

to quell protest activity.

Some experts worry that the tactics could endanger free speech and civil liberties, particularly in cases where students have had their property seized even though they have not been connected or charged with crimes.

“It really does just seem to be an expansion in law enforcement power that maybe didn’t exist 20, 25 years ago,” said Ms Saira Hussain, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit that advocates civil liberties protections online.

Universities have defended their tactics, saying they are necessary to protect students’ safety and combat discrimination.

At Penn, the university said the apartment search was necessary to maintain order and safety.

“Unfortunately, a small group of individuals, some of whom may be students, continue to take disruptive and at times illegal actions against the university community,” the school said in a statement.

“They continue to flout policies and laws that they do not think apply to them, and then blame their own institution when they encounter consequences,” the university added. “Laws must be enforced uniformly and fairly and are not designed to be waived when they do not suit a particular viewpoint.”

The New York Times reviewed documents in seven vandalism cases that involved search warrants to investigate student protesters. One has resulted in criminal charges.

In one episode involving campus graffiti in November, a dozen law enforcement officers searched the family home of two George Mason University students who are sisters.

The authorities said they found Hamas and Hezbollah flags and other materials displaying anti-American rhetoric and an expression indicating “Death to America”, as well as four weapons and ammunition.

But the authorities indicated that the materials and guns belonged to other family members living at the home, according to court filings.

The two women were barred from campus, but no charges have been filed.

In an open letter to the George Mason authorities, 100 faculty, students, politicians and political groups protested the decision to bar the students.

The university’s president Gregory Washington said the search findings suggested that “something potentially more nefarious” was going on, according to an e-mail he wrote to faculty obtained by the Times through a public records request.

He also said the university was actively collaborating with “a number of three-letter agencies aimed at keeping our campus and quite frankly our country safe”.

Concerns about privacy

At Penn, following a public outcry about the search, a committee review found that police had behaved professionally.

But the review raised questions about how such a search might cause “discomfort and even fear”.

University police have sometimes cited social media posts to justify their warrant requests.

But the posts are constitutionally protected speech, said Mr Zach Greenberg, a First Amendment lawyer at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech group.

He said the tactics could chill free expression.

Most students involved in surveillance cases were reluctant to talk about their experiences. Many students involved in protests have had their identities exposed or faced harassment.

“I’ve been doing legal work related to the right to protest for over 35 years, and I haven’t seen this kind of thing on college campuses,” said Ms Rachel Lederman, senior counsel with the Centre for Protest Law & Litigation.

Ms Lederman represents Ms Laaila Irshad, a third-year undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who had her cellphone seized by campus police.

Ms Irshad is asking a court to quash a warrant that led to the seizure. Almost six months after it was taken, it has not been returned, and she has not been charged with a crime.

In an e-mail, Ms Irshad said she felt “incredibly exposed” at the thought that police could review all the data on the phone, dating back to when she was in fifth grade.

“Everything is open to them from my random messages with friends to my Google searches about health issues to my political musings to my super intimate messages with family,” she wrote.

A university spokesperson said the warrant was related to an ongoing vandalism investigation, but would not describe the vandalism itself.

At least one warrant has led to a criminal case. At Indiana University Bloomington, a life-size sculpture of a former university president was vandalised with red paint on the anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel.

After reviewing security footage, university police obtained warrants to search a student’s car and cellphone.

The investigator found photos of the statue covered in paint, and the student was charged with two counts of criminal mischief.

Warrants but no charges

In several cases, students have not been charged with wrongdoing as a result of the warrants.

In September, three officers at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, arrived at the dorm room of Ms Laura Saavedra Forero, a senior who had regularly participated in protests.

Ms Saavedra Forero’s lawyer Jaelyn Miller said she believed police officers targeted her client because she uses a wheelchair that made her easier to identify than other students.

They obtained a search warrant for her cellphone and everything on it, arguing it most likely contained evidence about vandalism related to a protest.

The university said the warrant was related to vandalism of 10 campus buildings on Sept 19 but declined to answer additional questions.

“It’s very odd, for a low-level misdemeanour like the graffiti vandalism,” Ms Miller said, “for UNC to seek a search warrant against its own student, not because that student committed a crime, but purely because that student attended a protest and filmed at that protest.” NYTIMES