roachboy

1. generally speaking, libraries that actually stick to the official policies regarding ids (in reality this is far more flexible than the paper rules make it appear to be) have some kind of gate at the entrance--to get in at all you need a university id.
you can pass through them if you have another form of id, but not if you dont.
usually, the desk folk give you a proxy id when you enter the library.
and there are generally time parameters to this--for example, the main library at penn gave non-penn folk considerably more trouble on the weekends and after 9 pm than at other times if they wanted access to the library.

i do not know the particulars about getting access to this library, but it seems to me that the whole situation--all of it--was tripped by the decision to let this student in without an id.
if what he showed at the entrance was adequate to gain entry, then what unfolded inside begins to look more like harrassment--arguably more like harrassment--that was triggered by the carding policies that govern computer lab usage.
but the fact is that in this case, the concern is not and was not security.
it was turnover management in the computer lab.
the security issue was resolved when this student got access.

the same student, under the same logic, could have been reading in the stacks and would have consitituted no "security" concern.

so the whole "security" argument seems to me to be moot.

1a. i have to say that the element of this whole farce that really bugs me is that is happened in a library.
i do not think that the private property arguments advanced in this thread over and over should simply apply to university libraries--they are repositories of information of a quality that far exceeds those of even very good public libraries. (for myself, i have been spoiled by these resources--their value really cannot be overstated)--and as repsitories of information, these private spaces have a necessary public function and the spaces a necessarily public dimension.
a library cannot and should not be a fortress.
they should not be about preventing public access to information.

to go further would be a digression in this context, because the fact of the matter is that the kid was a student.
period.


2. many urban campuses have border trouble like that jorgelito described as happening at ucla. this does not constitute a state of emergency and in no way justifies police actions in this particular case.

3. usmc's posts are interesting, but they also seem to me to demonstrate the case i was making earlier: once the cops found themselves faced with a situation that it seems to me their own approach generated, what happened followed in a more or less straight line. the problem was the approach itself.

4. i had read about the charges of racism that surround this whole thing. i was not sure what to make of them, and so left them to the side. i dont think the perception the student had is in any way altered by referencing the skin color of the cops involved. but that is as far as i feel like i can go with this.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite