DPS Officers Invade an Apartment

This morning at 5 am two MU DPS officers entered an apartment in a university owned apartment complex. They did so because the door was ajar. Not because of loud noises, not because of any suspicious activity, but rather the door was ajar. In doing so they trespassed and committed a Class A misdemeanor according to Wisconsin State Statute 943.14 which states "Whoever intentionally enters the dwelling of another without the consent of some person lawfully upon the premises, under circumstances tending to create or provoke a breach of peace, is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor." The key here is that in entering the apartment and waking and then berating the occupants, the DPS officers clearly intended to wake people and breach the peace of the apartment. As such the officers committed a Class A Misdemeanor.

In addition the officers did not have a right, as agents of the owner of the property, to enter into the apartment under the terms of the lease, particularly Section 4.2(a) of the lease, which states that entering into the apartment is only allowable without prior written and/or verbal consent, if there is a health/safety emergency. Given that a door being ajar is not a clear sign of a safety emergency they, as agents of the owner, did not have the legal right to enter the apartment. Thereby, they not only committed a misdemeanor, but also violated the terms of the lease.

Once again DPS oversteps its bounds and violates the rights of multiple people on campus. In berating the students, they created a climate of fear within the apartment. No one would positively react to people in fake cop uniforms going into his apartment at 5 am, shining flashlights around, opening his bedroom door, and the proceeding to berate him for having an apartment door which was ajar. Hopefully this blatant assault on freedom will not go unpunished and the two officers who committed this crime will be reprimanded in order to guarantee that it never happens again.

In Financial News

For the curious out there MU's endowment in 2001 stood at $2 million. Today it stands at over $260 million. Before the financial crisis the endowment stood at over $330 million. For a supposedly Jesuit and Catholic institution, the radical increase in endowment is surprising, especially given that this money comes from the pockets of indebted students. Instead of increasing its tuition by about $1,000 a year, the university could do something like reroute endowment money to making tuition affordable. Back in the 1920's, when MU was run by Jesuits who believed in what they taught, it was cheaper to get a law degree at MU then at UW-Madison. Now days, there is no way that a student could achieve this, at least not without massive financial aid lowering MU's tuition cost. The absurd cost of $29,000 per year, puts most MU students well over $100,000 in debt before graduation, meaning that they are unable to start paying for things like a car or a house, until a decade after graduation. Given that the church teaches that people have a right to an education, and that charging excessive amounts for anything is a grave sin, MU is clearly flaunting Catholic teachings in favor of embracing a culture of greed which is promoted by the "leading" US educational institutions. Harvard has a large enough endowment for all of its students to attend for free, yet it still charges $40,000+ a year to attend. MU should separate itself from greedy schools like that, and instead cater to all people, instead of only to the wealthy.

DPS officers commit Class H felony

That's right, last night DPS officers responded to a shooting in the campus area. In doing so they apprehended and detained two suspects in the shooting. According to Wisconsin state statute 940.30 "Whoever confines or restrains another without that person's consent and with knowledge that he or she has no lawful authority to do so is guilty of a class H felony." That sounds exactly like what happened last night. Yet DPS brags about their response, as if it were some heroic act, rather than a felony. Sure people should respond when they physically see another person in trouble. DPS, should not, however, use video cameras to monitor the entirety of the campus area, and then show up and illegally imprison people. It's not their place, if they want to do that, then they should become cops. Moreover, the reaction of DPS, and their bragging about it fosters a culture on campus in which students feel that DPS has the right to respond this way. Students believe that they are being made safer because DPS officers ride around in their cars, with their faux police badges, and guns. The question is, wouldn't we be even safer if we hired Xe, formerly Blackwater Security, to patrol campus with tanks, helicopters, and assault rifles? The answer is, of course, but we would then be living in a self imposed police state. Freedom matters, and so does the law, which is why the DPS officers who responded last night should be arrested and charged with illegal imprisonment. Only through rejecting the oppression of DPS can we foster a culture of freedom and a true rule of law, for if some are exempt from following the law, then there is no true rule of law on campus.