It’s been a long week and you’re at a friend’s townhouse, apartment, or dorm room. Music is playing loudly, conversation is even louder, and people are imbibing. Suddenly, three loud bangs on the door. Then, silence. Someone rushes to turn off the music. A few people may try to hide. Because it’s not one of your friends at the door. It’s not even a Resident Assistant. Everyone knows it’s the Department of Public Safety.
Before I suggest what I might do if I were a resident, let me clarify something. DPS officers are not security guards. They are, in fact, law enforcement officers. More specifically, they are special police, meaning that like the Metropolitan Police Department, they derive their power from the mayor and D.C. Code, and they have full powers of arrest within their jurisdiction, Georgetown University. They are essentially Georgetown’s branch of MPD.
What rights do you have when dealing with DPS, compared to an MPD officer? Say you’re in your home over the summer watching Ace of Cakes with a friend who happens to really like Phish. For one reason or another, a police officer comes a-knocking. You answer the door, and he asks if he can come in, but you know that your friend reeks like a concert and that the officer will smell it if he comes in. Good thing you are under zero obligations to let him into your residence: he’s a stranger with a badge. If he has reason to enter, he probably won’t bother asking, and knocking was a courtesy. In this case, you can step outside and discuss the purpose of his visit with him outside. If he can see anything incriminating from the door, he has probable cause to come in, at which point you no longer have to consent for him to enter.
Now, I’m going to assume that you should have the same right to bar special police officers from your residence. If DPS has arrived because of excessive noise, then they have no technical right to enter your home—the presence of noise doesn’t imply the presence of alcohol. Exercising your right to determine which University employees can enter your residence isn’t proof of wrongdoing, either.
So now you’re outside your residence, having exercised your right not to let strange men into your residence. But one of them informs you that it’s University property, and therefore he’s allowed to enter, even if you don’t consent. This gets messy. He’s certainly not lying about it being University property—that’s why you’ll be charged at the end of the year if you decide to use duct tape to hang your posters on the wall. But remember that housing agreement you signed at the beginning of the year? Probably not, but it licenses your residence to you. And if you bother to read it, you’ll see that the University agrees “to provide the licensed area free from search and seizure.”
But that isn’t so simple, either. Qualifying that statement are a couple different exceptions. According to the Student Affairs handbook, a student’s room may be entered without the consent for administrative purposes (safety inspections, facility repairs, housekeeping), apparent emergencies like fire, and finally—and most contentiously—given reasonable suspicion of illegal conduct. “A search may be performed upon [oral or written] authorization of either the Director of Student Conduct, the Vice President for Student Affairs, Associate Dean of Students, or the Associate Director of Residence Life,” the handbook says.
Isn’t it clear now? No? Have you noticed the language they use throughout? Phrases like “reasonable suspicion” pepper the documents. Elsewhere, it says, “University Officials may also enter a student’s room to investigate suspected violation of University Policy.” Ask yourself, by whom is the violation suspected? To what degree does the suspicion have to exist? (Ultram) With illegal conduct, there must be “reasonable” suspicion; for University policy, is any hunch acceptable? I’ve used the phrase “student rights” a few times now, yet I haven’t been able to find it in any of the University literature. In fact, through Google, I was only able to find a handful of schools that use the phrase.
It seems students throughout the country don’t want rights, don’t care about rights, or don’t know that they can have rights. For me, that’s hard to believe, particularly at a school like Georgetown that enrolls so many aspiring lawyers. It seems for now we’re stuck trying to read between the lines of Georgetown’s policies regarding students, but that doesn’t mean your rights don’t exist. Just say, “I’d prefer to talk outside, officer.”
