By now everyone should be aware of the recent goings-on at Davidson University, as well as the similar but slightly more dated affairs of Campbell University and Pfeiffer University.
For those out of the loop, state courts have prohibited officers employed by those three universities from enforcing state law on the grounds that such action would represent an unconstitutional entanglement of church and state. Because those universities have religious affiliations, state officers working there could evidently be seen as agents of a religious organization. The first of these cases was handed down in 1994 at Campell. Pfeiffer came in 2002 and Davidson marked the newest chapter just last month.
And, as whispers in the media have indicated, the same issue may soon be arriving on the campus of Duke University. A Durham attorney named Bill Thomas has made clear in a Herald-Sun article that he intends to challenge the legitimacy of the DUPD on the same grounds “in the immediate future,” with the implied goal of suspending their powers of arrest. Thomas also added that the reach of such a decision would be “hard to ignore.”
There is already debate going on as to how successful Thomas’ thrust at the University’s police will be. His most obvious strengths are the Christian terminology found in the University’s bylaws, as well as the fact that local Methodist churches must approve candidates for 24 of the school’s 36 elected seats on the Board of Trustees. Some claim that this approval is nothing more than vestigial and that the same goes for the language of the bylaws; it is unclear whether or not the court will agree.
If they don’t, then the University will have a couple of options. It can choose to hire Durham Police Department officers to police the school, which is what Campbell, in its much tamer locale, has done since its 1994 decision at a cost of $400,000 annually. It can also choose to hire private security, but these measures too will leave enforcers without powers of arrest. Or it can revamp the decades-old charter on which it came to national recognition, so as to eliminate the constitutionally difficult language.
Whatever happens, if Thomas succeeds then changes will have to be made. After all, no serious institution is going to allow itself to go un-policed. So the appropriate steps will be taken, whatever they may be, and the University will once again have some sort of police force with the power to arrest wrong-doers on campus, at which point everything will more or less go back to normal.
This whole business of delegitimizing campus police on the basis of relatively inconsequential religious affiliations, then, must either be growing pains or a waste of time. Those who would call it growing pains would most likely still recognize the basically trivial nature of this debate while chalking a certain necessity of it up to the coerced streamlining of University missions and operations. A ruling would seemingly leave the university no better choice than to do away with its old religious language and procedure, and anyone who feels that this is a good thing for the school can probably stomach these court cases.
On the other hand, some individuals will choose to view the whole charade as a pointless exercise in lawyerly indulgence. Perhaps personal dissonance with the perceived importance of this case will come from the fact that none of the arrests so far have involved any sort of religious dispute, but rather are all instances of drunk drivers seeking to evade penalty through cleverest means possible. Or maybe it’s the difficulty in rationalizing the dedication of time, legal and judicial concentration, university and taxpayer money and effort in general to the dubious project of modernizing a set of words and practices that are already observed as little more than a powerless collection of empty antiquities. Lastly it could be that, as mentioned above, some people already rest assured that there will be no net effect to this affair: the University will go in with a capable police force and will emerge the same way, no matter what sort of headache goes on in between. Taken from this point of view, the continued portrayal of this issue as one of utmost urgency is not sustainable, and seems a little bit more like an unadulterated saturation of nonsense than anything else.
Now, it would be foolish to deny that the events discussed here represent some sort of constitutional loophole, and of course that loophole should be drawn closed. The state and University, though, would be wise to do it in the most efficient manner possible and in such a way so as to prevent undue polarization among the local population.
A multitude of truly divisive issues exist in this world. There is no need to pass a novelty off as one of them.
Chris Bassil is a Trinity junior. His column runs every Friday.
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