College tries to cover up dorm murder

Instead of trying to do Anna Nicole, this is the sort of thing Law & Order used to do with a flair. The fact that college administrators tried to hush this up does not surprise me one iota. From today's Chronicle of Higher Education:

When Laura Dickinson was found dead in her dormitory room in December, officials at Eastern Michigan University announced they did not suspect foul play. Staff members told students there was no reason to worry.

But last month, the police arrested an Eastern Michigan student, and he was charged with rape and murder in the case. And newly released court documents that detail how campus police discovered Ms. Dickinson's body suggest they had reason to suspect from the beginning that she was the victim of a violent crime.

This month the U.S. Department of Education began questioning Eastern Michigan officials following a complaint from Security on Campus Inc., a watchdog group. The organization is urging the Education Department to formally investigate and possibly fine Eastern Michigan for violating the Clery Act, the federal law that requires colleges and universities to disclose information about crimes on their campuses and to warn students of threats to their safety.

In public forums at Eastern Michigan and in interviews with The Chronicle, many students said they felt betrayed by administrators and unsafe on the campus. This month the president of the university placed the vice president for student affairs, who oversees the university's housing and campus police departments, on administrative leave.

But the president, John A. Fallon III, says university officials did not initially suspect a crime, and the university's general counsel says it was not clear that a warning was required under the Clery Act.

Ms. Dickinson, 22, who was in her first semester at Eastern Michigan, lived in a single room in Hill Hall. She was studying human nutrition and hoped to join the Peace Corps before pursuing a career as a hospital dietitian. This past fall a friend recruited her to the women's rowing team. The last time Ms. Dickinson's friends remember seeing her was at the team's Christmas party, on December 12.

After her father failed to reach her on her cellphone for two days, he called the university housing department. By that time, some students had noticed a strong odor in Hill and mentioned it to members of the housing staff. On December 15, a resident adviser opened Ms. Dickinson's door, saw her body, and called the campus police.

Jeffrey Nesmith, a lieutenant in Eastern Michigan's Department of Public Safety, testified in state court last month that police officers had found Ms. Dickinson's body on the floor of her dormitory room. Mr. Nesmith said the student was naked from the waist down, with her legs spread and a pillow over her face.

The following day, university officials announced Ms. Dickinson's death in a written statement. "At this point, there is no reason to suspect foul play," it said. "We are fully confident in the safety and security of our campus environment."

Timely Warning

The officials' statement was irresponsible and possibly illegal, says S. Daniel Carter, senior vice president of Security on Campus. "It's abundantly clear that EMU authorities, specifically law enforcement, had reason to believe it was a sexual assault and homicide."

The Clery Act requires administrators to issue a "timely warning" when a crime presents a threat to students and staff members. Mr. Carter wonders how Eastern Michigan officials could not have seen Ms. Dickinson's death as a threat. "They should have warned their campus community," he says.

The university did not disclose any information about the circumstances of Ms. Dickinson's death until February 23, when the Washtenaw County prosecutor charged Orange Amir Taylor III, also a student at Eastern Michigan, with her murder. Mr. Taylor, 20, who faces additional charges, including rape, burglary, and larceny, is being held without bail. His next court hearing is scheduled for March 22.

According to Mr. Nesmith's testimony, a surveillance camera recorded Mr. Taylor's entering Hill at 4:30 a.m. on December 13, and leaving an hour and a half later. The student, who was living off campus, admitted to a habit of roaming through dorms to steal computers. He said he had entered a student's room that was unlocked, but he denied seeing Ms. Dickinson. A sample of his DNA, however, matched DNA found on her body.

The campus police had questioned Mr. Taylor at least twice before, according to The Ann Arbor News. In 2005 he was caught climbing through the window of a university building. He told the police he was looking for "girls and activity on campus," according to the local newspaper.

President Fallon says his first indication of a crime in Ms. Dickinson's death was the arrest of Mr. Taylor.

"It was reported early on that foul play was not suspected," Mr. Fallon says. As the investigation developed, however, there were "serious, strong, and abiding concerns about the raising of information that would prejudice the case," he says. "It affected the nature and focus and specificity of the information" released. The president announced this month that he would hire a private lawyer to examine the university's handling of the case.

Kenneth A. McKanders, Eastern Michigan's general counsel, says he is not sure the case called for a timely warning under the Clery Act. "That is a question we're retaining independent counsel to take a close look at, to determine what our obligations were," he says. "I guess it would be balancing the warning requirement with any need for confidentiality with regard to the investigation."

Mr. Carter says that protecting the integrity of a criminal investigation is not an excuse for failing to warn students of a possible threat to their safety. "The timely-warning requirement has always allowed institutions wide latitude in what they disclosed," he says.

As long as officials issue some form of warning, he says, "they are free to withhold information that would possibly jeopardize an ongoing investigation."

Bonnie S. Fisher, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Cincinnati, says that after a crime has occurred on a campus, protecting students should be administrators' primary concern. Ms. Fisher, who studies sexual-assault reporting and the Clery Act, is part of Cincinnati's Sexual Offense Response Team, a group of staff members who meet within 24 hours of reported rapes to decide whether to issue warnings. They almost always do, though she says they often withhold details of time and place to protect the victim, as well as any criminal investigation.

"You don't want to instill panic by any means, but you want people to be informed and alert so they can adjust their behavior accordingly," she says. "It's interesting that this university wouldn't think of that, because it's like, wait a minute, we're talking about the safety and security of the campus community."

Parents Unaware

Ms. Dickinson's parents say they did not know their daughter's death was being investigated as a murder until Mr. Taylor was arrested. After the resident adviser discovered the student's body, in December, a university official called her father, Robert Dickinson, in Hastings, Mich., and told him his daughter was dead. He and his wife, Debra, their two sons, and Ms. Dickinson's boyfriend drove two hours to the Eastern Michigan campus, in Ypsilanti.

Mr. Dickinson says his daughter suffered from cardiac arrhythmia and had been short of breath the last time she spoke with her boyfriend, on December 12. The family assumed she had died of a heart attack.

It seemed strange, Mr. Dickinson says, that the university would not let his family take his daughter's belongings home for two weeks. No one told him, he says, how her body was found, or that her room was a crime scene.

"There are things that we could have known a little bit ahead of time," he says.

Mr. Dickinson did not see the medical examiner's report until this week, he says. It said Ms. Dickinson was suffocated and strangled and probably died of asphyxiation.

Mr. Dickinson does not fault Eastern Michigan officials for their handling of his daughter's case. "Our belief is that they didn't want the suspect to take off or flee because he knew they were looking for somebody," he says. "If what they did was to that end, then it needed to happen."

But Ms. Dickinson's parents are considering suing Eastern Michigan for not keeping their dorms secure. "It would not be for financial gain. It would be for policy change," Mr. Dickinson says. "What Deb and I are trying to weigh right now is, as much as it hurts, how can we make this situation an example for other colleges to strengthen their securities?"

In an interview with The Chronicle, James F. Vick, the vice president for student affairs who was put on leave, suggested that campus police officers may have suspected Ms. Dickinson was the victim of a crime. "I don't think the police never didn't expect foul play," he said. "That would be a very simplistic view of it. It was always a possibility. It was always one of the things that could have been." He declined to comment further.

President Fallon describes Mr. Vick's leave as standard procedure in an investigation of an incident "of sufficient importance or perhaps even controversy."

Student Response

Many students have criticized the university's handling of the case. "I felt like they were really lying to us by saying that there was no foul play even suspected," says Jessica Richardson. Ms. Richardson, a sophomore at Eastern Michigan, was alarmed by Mr. Taylor's arrest. Her resident adviser had told her Ms. Dickinson had committed suicide.

Michael C. Garrison, a junior, says most students have become distrustful of the university administration. "The more and more information that is put out, it gives me a harder time of believing that EMU acted in good faith," he says. "Either someone seriously messed up, or they were trying to make it not look bad in the press's eyes."

Several students say Mr. Fallon deflected their questions at the public forums, where some students also protested the suspension of Mr. Vick, whom they see as a scapegoat.

Mark D. Higbee, a professor of history, has publicly denounced Mr. Fallon's handling of the murder case and called for his resignation. "Rather than being a president who knows where the buck stops, it seems like he's trying to dodge it," Mr. Higbee said in an interview with The Chronicle. "I don't see how Eastern can recover while he's in charge."

Mr. Fallon was already under fire before Ms. Dickinson's death. Three members of Eastern Michigan's Board of Regents resigned in early December to protest what they said was ineffective university leadership. In the fall, a faculty strike delayed the start of classes, after negotiations between professors and administrators collapsed.

Regents to Discuss Case

The board was scheduled to hold a meeting next week with its new members. Mr. McKanders, the general counsel, says the board, and not Mr. Fallon, will select a lawyer to investigate the university's handling of Ms. Dickinson's death.

One of the regents, Gary D. Hawks, said he expected next week's meeting to include a report on the case from Mr. Fallon. Mr. Hawks supports Eastern Michigan officials' apparent decision to withhold information about Ms. Dickinson's death. "If there's an investigation taking place, you don't want to do anything that is showing your hand to the perpetrator," he said. "At least they caught the culprit. It sounds like that's the biggest plus."

While Ms. Dickinson's alleged killer awaits trial, the university faces sharp scrutiny. A possible investigation by the Education Department could take up to two years, says Mr. Carter, of Security on Campus. Since 1990, when the Clery Act was passed, three institutions -- Mount St. Clare College (now called Ashford University), in Iowa; Salem International University, in West Virginia; and Miami University, in Ohio -- have been fined under the law, which carries a $27,500 penalty for each violation.

Mr. Carter says the emerging suspected details of Ms. Dickinson's death are similar to those of the murder of Jeanne A. Clery, for whom the crime-reporting law was named. Ms. Clery was a student at Lehigh University in 1986, when she was raped and strangled in her dormitory room by another Lehigh student, whom she did not know.

If Eastern Michigan officials knew Ms. Dickinson was killed, and they did not inform their students, Mr. Carter says, "that is as serious as it gets."

Here's the link to Security on Campus, which is the watchdog group for this stuff.

Here are the two relevant portions of the law:

(3) Each institution participating in any program under this subchapter and part C of subchapter I of chapter 34 of title 42 shall make timely reports to the campus community on crimes considered to be a threat to other students and employees described in paragraph (1)(F) that are reported to campus security or local law police agencies. Such reports shall be provided to students and employees in a manner that is timely and that will aid in the prevention of similar occurrences.

and:

(13) Upon a determination pursuant to section 1094 (c)(3)(B) of this title that an institution of higher education has substantially misrepresented the number, location, or nature of the crimes required to be reported under this subsection, the Secretary shall impose a civil penalty upon the institution in the same amount and pursuant to the same procedures as a civil penalty is imposed under section 1094 (c)(3)(B) of this title. (14) (A) Nothing in this subsection may be construed to— (i) create a cause of action against any institution of higher education or any employee of such an institution for any civil liability; or (ii) establish any standard of care. (B) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, evidence regarding compliance or noncompliance with this subsection shall not be admissible as evidence in any proceeding of any court, agency, board, or other entity, except with respect to an action to enforce this subsection.

Posted by Steve-O at March 16, 2007 09:31 AM | TrackBack