[Peace] (no subject)

[Simona Sawhney]

This is from yesterday's paper. If students on our campus are 
similarly questioned, is there any way that we might be able to 
provide support or help? Any lawyers out there?

Simona




>In Sweeping Campus Canvasses, U.S. Checks on Mideast Students
>
>November 12, 2001
>
>By JACQUES STEINBERG
>
>
>
>
>In the two months since the attacks of Sept. 11, federal
>investigators have contacted administrators on more than
>200 college campuses to collect information about students
>from Middle Eastern countries, the most sweeping canvass of
>the halls of academia since the cold war, the colleges say.
>
>
>The agents have asked what subjects the students are
>studying, whether they are performing well and where they
>are living.
>
>They have also questioned the students themselves, asking
>about their views on Osama bin Laden, the names of their
>favorite restaurants and their plans for after graduation.
>
>The investigations have put the universities in a
>difficult position, pitting the government's interest in
>security against the institutions' desire to protect
>students' privacy and to avoid engaging in racial
>profiling.
>
>But in the end, a national survey of college registrars
>found, nearly all the universities approached have readily
>supplied answers to the government's questions, largely
>because the law appears to be on the government's side.
>
>The agents, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and
>the Immigration and Naturalization Service, have used those
>conversations as the basis for interviewing dozens of
>students.
>
>One Saudi Arabian student, who attends the University of
>Colorado at Denver, said federal investigators closed their
>interview with him by saying, "Expect to see us again."
>
>The college officials who have been sought out - including
>those at Columbia University, Tufts University and San
>Diego State University - said that the often unannounced
>visits and the urgent lines of inquiry were throwbacks to a
>decade or more ago, when it was not uncommon for a federal
>agent to ask a dean a question like "Did Vladimir show up
>at the lab today?"
>
>Larry Bell, director of international education at the
>University of Colorado in Denver, said that federal agents
>had visited his office or the registrar's office five times
>in recent weeks.
>
>Mr. Bell said that the agents had interviewed at least 50
>students from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar
>and other Arab countries. He said he did not believe any
>had been arrested or linked to a terrorist cell.
>
>"The students are not sure what the purpose of the
>questions are," Mr. Bell said. "But they know that the
>government isn't interviewing any students from Germany."
>
>Mindful that a terrorist with a student visa participated
>in the Sept. 11 attacks, the federal agencies said they
>were seeking to mine further leads and to begin making good
>on the president's promise to ensure that the half-million
>foreign students studying here were accounted for on their
>campuses.
>
>"One of the reasons they want to know where a student lives
>is so that they can come find them when necessary or simply
>watch them," said Catheryn Cotten, director of the
>international student office at Duke University, who has
>yet to receive such a visit but has been in contact with
>many colleges that have. "It's not that they want to arrest
>the students. They want to keep track of them coming and
>going."
>
>Still, the sudden appearance of agents in college buildings
>and the government's plans to expand such surveillance have
>heightened the anxiety on campuses already jittery because
>of the terrorist attacks and the anthrax scares.
>
>"It's just very hard to squeal on your own students," said
>James O. Freedman, a former president of Dartmouth College.
>"You don't want students to get the perception that you are
>in league with those who may be out to get them."
>
>The Saudi student in Colorado, who asked not to be
>identified, said that two agents from the F.B.I. and
>another from the I.N.S. arrived at his apartment
>unannounced on a Wednesday evening about a month ago.
>
>The agents said they had gotten his name from two other
>Saudi students who had been briefly detained after they had
>been observed taking photographs of the university's sports
>arena. The photographs were for a photography class, Mr.
>Bell said.
>
>In his interview with the authorities, the student, a
>26-year-old landscape architecture major, said he was asked
>about his classes, activities and politics. "I was afraid,"
>he said. "I know they can do anything they want to you."
>
>Still, he understood the situation. "I don't blame them,"
>he said. "Thousands of innocent people were killed in a few
>seconds and a few hours."
>
>In a survey by the American Association of Collegiate
>Registrars and Admissions Officers, 220 colleges reported
>that they had been contacted at least once by the F.B.I. or
>the I.N.S. after Sept. 11 about the status of foreign
>students. Nearly a quarter of those institutions reported
>multiple contacts.
>
>A federal immigration official, who insisted on anonymity,
>said that the colleges had been identified in the belief
>that foreign students there might have information that
>would assist the government's inquiry.
>
>"These visits are a component of an ongoing criminal
>investigation," the official said.
>
>Under federal immigration law, the government is entitled
>to much of the information it has sought. As a condition of
>most education visas, a foreign student signs a waiver
>permitting a college to let immigration officials know when
>the student arrived on campus, how many credits the student
>had earned and whether the student's field of study or
>mailing address had changed.
>
>Though college administrators are required to collect such
>information, they said that the government asked them to
>stop sending it to Washington years ago, in part because
>the I.N.S. could not scale the mountain of paperwork.
>
>But in the weeks since Sept. 11, federal officials have
>been aggressively gathering such records and more. The
>colleges comply for financial and legal reasons. By
>alienating the government, a school could risk losing its
>authority to request visas for foreign students, most of
>whom pay full tuition.
>
>There is a long tradition of law enforcement watching over
>college campuses in times of crisis. But Sol Gittleman,
>provost of Tufts University and a professor there for
>nearly 40 years, said he could not recall when outside
>agencies had descended on so many campuses so quickly.
>"Unprecedented," Mr. Gittleman said. "We've never had a
>national emergency like this."
>
>The scrutiny of students of Arab descent has so far touched
>off little protest, a stark contrast to the outrage when
>American-born students have been profiled by university or
>law enforcement officials. In 1992, the campus of the State
>University of New York College at Oneonta was riven for
>weeks after the college provided the state police with a
>list of every black and Hispanic student in an
>investigation of an assault on an elderly woman.
>
>In the current investigation, federal agents have contacted
>Columbia University two or three times and interviewed at
>least one foreign student, said Virgil Renzulli, a
>spokesman for the school. Mr. Renzulli said he did not
>believe that the student was arrested.
>
>At San Diego State University, the government has sought
>information about many of the 60 students from the Middle
>East because, university officials said, two of the
>hijackers lived in San Diego and had ties to the Muslim
>community.
>
>University officials said that the authorities later
>arrested one San Diego State student and transported him to
>New York, where he was being held as a material witness.
>
>But the investigation on the San Diego campus continues. On
>Wednesday, immigration officials delivered a written
>request to the university seeking information about the
>locations and studies of 40 students from Arab nations, a
>request that the university intends to honor.
>
>"It's upsetting," said Jane Kalionzes, associate director
>of the international student center. "Even though we've
>always known that reporting is a part of our job, we
>haven't done it in so long."
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/national/12STUD.html?ex=1006580406&
>ei=1&en=8f2d00c9cc037edf