Dean Redman Commits Fraud

By Emmett Hogan | Monday, June 11, 2001

Nulla poena sine lege — 'no punishment without a law'. This seemingly self-evident dictum constitutes a crucial cornerstone of the American justice system. It is the motivating force behind our constitutional protection against ex post facto laws. It enshrines an expansive view of human liberties; if you want to punish something, you have to pass a law against it. If there is no law, there is no crime, and the action is permissible.

In the past few months, Dartmouth's Dean of Residential Life, Martin Redman, has been behaving in a way that suggests his ignorance of this principle. He does so at his own peril. Dean Redman's decision in the 'sex papers' scandal involving the Zeta Psi fraternity so flagrantly violates the College's own regulations that the College is, by his actions, guilty of fraud.

It is quite true that Dartmouth College, as a private institution, is not hampered by the civil rights guaranteed us by the Constitution. In theory, President Wright may well institute a speech code, if he so desires (he undoubtedly does and, in fact, has already — more on that later). But the College does have a legal obligation to abide by its own regulations. The Student Handbook is a contract between students and the College. Upon matriculation (and, in fact, even before matriculation), students are expected to abide by its tenets. Conversely, the College cannot go beyond the written corpus of those regulations. To do so constitutes contract violation, or fraud. This is precisely what happened in the case of Zeta Psi.

How did the College, and Dean Redman in particular, do this? Let's examine the charges, of which there were three: one violation of a Dartmouth Standard of Conduct — harassment, to be precise — and two violations of the house's own local and national charters. I will begin with the charge of violating one of the Standards of Conduct.

Zeta Psi was alleged to have violated Standard II, which reads: 'Students and student organizations must not engage in behavior that threatens the safety, security, or functioning of the College, the safety and security of its members, or the safety and security of others.' Harassment is listed as one type of behavior that constitutes a violation of this Standard. It is defined as 'abusive behavior or conduct that is targeted at an individual or group and is ordinarily repeated'.

A comparison with New Hampshire's laws against harassment is illustrative. Section 644:4 of the state's criminal code has a detailed definition of harassment, that specifically indicates the many ways it can occur — in person, over the phone, through e-mail, and so on. But a crucial defining idea is 'communication'. To constitute harassment in the state of New Hampshire, an action must be communicated to the victim. This makes sense; consequently, gossip cannot be defined as harassment.

Similarly, with Dartmouth's own regulations, the behavior has to be 'targeted at an individual or group'. Simply talking about someone, even repeatedly, or even printing it, does not constitute harassment — any reasonable person would concede this. So what does 'targeted' mean? This means that, as with New Hampshire law, the action has to be directed at — in other words, communicated to — the victim. And, because harassment is listed as an example of conduct that violates Standard II, it must reasonably threaten the 'safety and security' of College students — the crux of the Standard.

Melissa Heaton claims victim status. She was gossiped about; she was insulted. But she was not harassed. The contents of the Sigma Report were for internal consumption only. The comments were never directed at her, and the only way she was able to discover the content of these papers was by digging through a dumpster and piecing a copy together. Clearly, the Sigma Report was not communicating with her. The brothers of Zeta Psi talked about Melissa Heaton, but they did not target their actions at her. Her 'safety and security' were not threatened. Clearly, she was not harassed.

Dean Redman invented a charge of harassment. His argument is, essentially, that a person can be harassed without knowing it (thank goodness we have Dean Redman to inform us when we've been harassed!) and without having his or her safety threatened. This contradicts not only common sense; it contradicts the standards listed in the Student Handbook itself. For this reason, he has committed fraud.

Perhaps one of the most abominable actions taken by Dean Redman was his punishment of Zeta Psi for two violations of local and national charters. He claims that violating charter regulations is a violation of Minimum Standards. How is this the case?

Dean Redman argued to me, in person, that he was able to punish Psi Upsilon for violating the Principle of Community. Yes, that selfsame Principle of Community that the Student Handbook notes 'in itself is not adjudicable'. The vehicle for this was a requirement of the Minimum Standards that says fraternities and sororities are obliged to incorporate the spirit of the Principle of Community into their charters. Thus, Dean Redman claimed the ability to punish them for violating the spirit Principle of Community. In essence, he is punishing them on the basis of a speech code that applies to 40% of the College's undergraduate population, but not to the other 60%. If these students were not Greeks, their speech would not be punishable (ignoring, for the moment, Redman's asinine views on harassment).

Here we have another violation of College regulations. Since the Student Handbook is the main contract that governs the relationship between the student body and the College, it explicitly notes that the Principle of Community is not adjudicable. Does it make sense that the College can grant us a right — a legal right — and then repudiate that right via other rules? The two cannot co-exist; and because we have contractual protection from adjudication of the Principle of Community, in name or in spirit, the Minimum Standards requirement represents an infringement of that contractual protection. The College, as a liberal arts institution, should not be able to enforce the Principle of Community on a select segment of the student population. But more to the point: they also cannot. That is fraud.

But Dean Redman has another argument. The Principle of Community aside, he claims to have the authority to punish any violation at any level, even if it is a violation of a fraternity's national charter. He claims to able to do this because of the little-noted Standard VII of the Standards of Conduct. That Standard reads, specifically: 'students and student organizations must abide by College policies, rules, and regulations.' Fair enough, one would say; we should certainly be required to abide by College policies. This should almost go without saying.

In personal communication, he argued that Standard VII gives him the right to punish students and organizations for any violation of any College or College-related policy or regulation, at any level. But nowhere in that Standard is Dean Redman given authority to punish offenses that do not relate to the Standards of Conduct. The Standard says that we should abide by all College policies. But it does not give Dean Redman himself jurisdiction over all such violations (as he claims), and it does not give him the authority to punish violations that do not come from the College — as is the case with violations of national charters.

Consider, for example, if the state of New Hampshire adopted such an attitude. Certainly, we should be expected to abide by the laws of New Hampshire. But does the state of New Hampshire have the authority to punish someone for a violation of, say, the Minimum Standards? Can New Hampshire punish a Dartmouth student for cheating on a test? Of course not; cheating is a violation of a College policy, not a state law.

Simply put, violations of College-related policies should be punished by whatever the appropriate organ is. The Judiciary Committee and the national structure of a given fraternity are the only organs with the jurisdiction to adjudicate violations of their own policies. Dean Redman does not have that jurisdiction. In fact, by claiming this power when it doesn't exist, Redman himself has violated the College's rules. Because he claims power that he does not have and because he is punishing students on the basis of a jurisdiction he does not have, he has committed fraud.

For those readers who are incredulous that violation of the College's policies by the College itself constitutes fraud, I need only refer to history. Under President Freedman's tenure, in 1988 and 1989, several students affiliated with The Dartmouth Review were expelled or otherwise punished by the College for — and I am not making this up — 'vexatious oral exchange'. In this case, those students published a transcript of the horrible classroom rantings and ravings of one Professor Cole, of the music department. Cole repeatedly snapped at Review students when he passed them on the streets—all of which The Dartmouth Review reported. When those students visited Professor Cole with a written invitation to defend his actions in the pages of The Dartmouth Review, Cole became belligerent, and an argument ensued, resulting in the professor pushing one of the students. He was not disciplined, but the students were.

The court proceedings were a farce. Evidence of bias against the Review students was glaring. 'Vexatious oral exchange' is, of course, not prohibited by the College's regulations. Consequently, the judge decided that there was no basis for punishment. The students were re-admitted, and President Freedman had to inform the faculty that, because of the legal expenses, they would not be receiving any pay raises that year. The court found, in sum, that punishing students for offenses that do not exist constitutes contract violation.

As we can see, the College has been burned in situations like this before. They have tried to punish students on dubious charges in the past, and have failed. In the Cole case, the regulation that was supposedly violated did not exist; in the Zeta Psi case, the regulation is 'interpreted' so broadly that it stretches credulity. No judge in the entire state would ever believe that, by the College's own definition of harassment, the brothers of Zeta Psi harassed Melissa Heaton.

What is so shocking about this whole affair, too, is that Dean Redman is a repeat offender. For example, the Psi Upsilon fraternity was recently punished for the actions of a small number of members. They were chanting an old College cheer in front of their house when a female student, whom The Dartmouth Review has learned to be Darby Green '01, passed by. She shouted 'why is Psi U so cool?', to which one brother replied, 'Why are you so fat?'. Dean Redman ruled that they violated the College's prohibition of sexual abuse (!), found in Standard III of the Standards of Conduct.

Standard III defines sexual abuse as 'conduct of a sexual nature which reasonably would be expected to have the effect of threatening or intimidating the personal [sic] at whom such conduct is directed' (emphasis added). The description goes on to list several other circumstances, but each one of them notes that the conduct has to be of a sexual nature. The only comment directed at Darby Green was 'why are you so fat?'.

How this constitutes sexual abuse is beyond my ken. But a few things are certain. Those who think that the College should be careful in levying the charge of sexual abuse should be outraged with Dean Redman's decision in the Psi U case. Those who think that sexual abuse is an extremely serious offense should be outraged that he apparently feels it only warrants two-term social probation. It seems clear that Dean Redman was cynically pursuing some other agenda in handing down this decision. If his interest was in pursuing justice, he would not have found Psi U guilty of sexual abuse. If he really believed that Psi U committed sexual abuse, he would have issued a harsher punishment (assuming, of course, that he thinks sexual abuse is as appalling a thing as I do).

But Dean Redman is merely looking out for the College's reputation, and has no interest in justice at all. He has, on these two recent occasions, invented charges so that he could punish fraternities guilty of nothing more than unseemly behavior. He knows full well that these charges are flimsy. He took two weeks to decide on a charge; and, soon after the story broke, he commented that 'we're still trying to ascertain what the organization gets charged with.' Whether Dean Redman is being told what to do, or whether his prurient sensibilities deprive him of any sense of impartiality, the simple fact remains that Dean Redman does not follow College regulations, and wields his power in an arbitrary and unjust way.

Fortunately, Zeta Psi is considering legal action. They have been given the name of a lawyer who specializes in cases like this, and may even get in touch with the American Civil Liberties Union. The College has presented the fraternity with an existential threat; they are forcing Zeta Psi to call their bluff. And once again, thanks to the poor judgement of Dean Redman, the College may get burned.

Dean Redman Commits Fraud

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