At CMU, a Candid Dispute Over Turning a Video Camera on Others

By Ed Brayton 12/12/07 9:31 PM

[COMMENTARY] Over the last few months, Central Michigan University has seen a minor disagreement between a student and a professor turn into a national news story and now a potential lawsuit.

The situation began when Dennis Lennox, a CMU junior, began questioning why Prof. Gary Peters, who teaches American government at CMU, was allowed to keep his position while running a campaign to replace U.S. Rep. Joe Knollenberg, R-Mich.

Lennox argued that Peters cannot adequately do his job while running for public office and he started a group called Students Against Gary Peters, demanding that the university force Peters to choose between teaching and running for Congress. He then began following Peters around campus with a video camera, badgering him and harassing him, and then posting the videos on the Internet.

The situation really escalated when Lennox decided to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the internal correspondence of the CMU administration on the issue. He did this Oct. 15 by marching into the office of Interim Dean Pamela Gates without an appointment and literally shoving an envelope in her face, while videotaping her as well. She pushed his camera aside and told him to get out of her office, as I suspect most people would have.

That led the CMU administration to declare that no one on campus could videotape anyone else on campus without their permission, though they evidently have not passed any official policy to prohibit that. The ACLU of Michigan recently sent a letter to administration officials informing them that such a policy is unconstitutional and unworkable.

Continued -

So which side is right? Both, to some degree. As a legal matter, the ACLU is right that any policy that flatly banned videotaping anyone on campus without their permission is unconstitutional. It would forbid even routine news gathering by a TV station, filming a crowd at a football game and much more. That simply isn

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LoRayne Apo-Joynt

Response to Mr. Zarko's complaint As emailed to Mr. Zarko, Michigan Messenger Fellow Ed Brayton has addressed the specific concerns regarding the missing linkage. Upon investigation, it appears this was a transposition error not picked up in copy editing since the links appear in original draft and subsequent final version prior to posting in the publishing platform.

If readers have any concerns regarding errors in the content posted at Michigan Messenger, they are asked to leave a comment at the subject post and/or email MichiganMessenger@gmail.com. We will attend to them as promptly as possible.

In regards to Mr. Zarko's comments regarding my editorial response: the comments Mr. Zarko has left on specific posts at Michigan Messenger were not unbiased and did not convey to other readers his motivations and potential conflicts as a paid conservative consultant. At Michigan Messenger we are clear about the drivers that motivate our work; we're going to be equally clear about the motivations of others who have a vested interest in critiquing our work.

chetly

Thanks Thanks. I doubted that it would be anything other than unintentional from you, Ed. My concern was prompted by previous editorial treatment by Ms. Apo-Joynt. In addition to the link though, at least in the future I'd appreciate acknowledgment of the publication I released it in. For example, when I link a document by the Detroit Free Press, I also typically cite the Detroit Free Press rather than just "here".

Substantively -

Of course not "every person has the right in every situation to follow someone around with a video camera" and obviously no one has a right to "harass" although that term itself is full of legal gray area. But that's obvious. It's like saying people don't have a right to yell fire in a theatre. There is no evidence Dennis Lennox yelled fire, harassed anyone, or followed anyone in inappropriate situations. Did he create discomfort? Yes. Did he have to file FOIA's in person? No. Was he barred from it legally? No. Even if he went there with the motivation you ascribe (he could have perceived the camera as a way of protecting himself against false accusations too, but ...), so what. There's nothing inherently wrong with going to your public body with the intent of catching them behaving controversially. I doubt he intended to provoke "violence" - just document public officials behaving stupidly. That's the self-professed reason Bruce Fealk documents Knollenberg staff. At the least, if that is a possible motivation, we must give Lennox the benefit of that doubt and accept his motivation was lawful, even if distasteful. While we all know Fealk's motivation is publicity and to attack a political opponent - which is Lennox's - I've seen nothing in Fealk's behavior warranting governmental punishment, although his appearance at Knollenberg's home came much closer than Lennox because the law of trespass is very clear.

Can someone decide to tape me? Yes. Follow me around all day? That'd probably amount to stalking - depending on the methods they used. If I am at public events or working for the government though and a guy comes around only occasionally to monitor my activity, most certainly. You disprove your own case with a bad strawman - you have no evidence that Lennox is following someone "all day". His disruptions have been isolated to short spans of time on very sporadic occasions.

Ed Brayton

Chetley Zarko wrote:
Was this an intentional link-pull by the editor because it was my site that broke the document you refer to?

No, it was an unintentional oversight that resulted from my having neglected to copy the links over when I copied the article over to this website. I did it with another link to, but someone had caught that earlier. It's been fixed now.

Fifth, which procedures did Lennox not follow in "the procedures for making a FOIA request." There was a time when FOIA proscribed for no "FOIA officer" and actually allowed a requester to submit a request to any public employee. Recent amdemdments, allowing e-mail filing of FOIA requests, etc., have changed that to allow public bodies to designate a FOIA officer, but it is not clear from FOIA law that there is a "procedure", nor is it clear that a public official isn't obligated to accept a request in person. Just because he can file one way, does mean he is barred from filing the other way (who knows, maybe he was reading a 10 year citizen's guide type-of-copy of the FOIA printed by someone else, or an old law book without knowing how to do proper legal diligence). But even if it were required to do it a certain way - it would seem good public officials would know that students and taxpayers might not be versed on the law's nuances and that they would just accept such requests with a smile.

According to the report we read on your site, he had already put in several FOIA requests prior to the one in question and had been specifically told that they didn't have to be served on the person they were about. The fact that he went there with a camera in his hand and said the things he did makes it very clear to me that he did so solely to provoke the very confrontation he had. You can disagree if you want, but I think my conclusion is perfectly sound.

I agree with you - Lennox is an attention-seeker and a confrontational prick. So what. Does that divest him of his First Amendment rights? No. That's where the First Amendment needs its most protection - nice guys that everyone likes need no First Amendment. On that note, I highly disagree with your assertion - "Legally, this is a fairly gray area. ..." Not gray at all. CMU has grossly and boldly crushed the First Amendment in several ways. It's not murky. It's not defendable.

You misunderstand my point. As I said, the unconstitutionality of the blanket rule that CMU tried to implement banning anyone from videotaping without their permission is clear. The ACLU is right to condemn that blanket rule. But that doesn't mean that every person has the right in every situation to follow someone around with a video camera and harass them. That is what I said was a gray area, and so it is. I spoke to two constitutional law professors about it while researching this article and both said that the courts have rarely taken up such cases and that the dividing line between what is allowed in that regard and what may constitute harassment is a very gray area in the law. Can someone who just doesn't like you decide that they're going to follow you around all day long with a video camera and tape everything you do all day? I would certainly hope not. At some point it must cross the line into harassment. Where that line is drawn is not at all clear and that is what I was referring to. But I also said that CMU's blanket ban on all videotaping was clearly unconstitutional. I'll happily stand up for Lennox's first amendment rights, and I did so in this article. But your word still fits him quite well.

chetly

paragraphing I tried to paragraph that - sorry, something eliminated my paragraph spacing.

chetly

Ed - evidence First, did this piece intend to link to my work in this matter? There is this statement, but only the YouTube video has an active link:

Lennox uploaded 10 seconds of the video of this incident to YouTube (see here), but the university

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At CMU, a Candid Dispute Over Turning a Video Camera on Others