As students were passing through the Curry Student Center yesterday afternoon they were handed a neatly typed flier asking for solidarity, asking for an apology.
The Northeastern International Socialist Organization (ISO) was suspended on Oct. 9 for not re-registering for the fall quarter which they said is false and bureaucratic.
The Director of Student Activities Todd Shaver sees it differently.
On Oct. 9, Shaver was presented with a flyer that was taken off of a Huntington Avenue trash can, the subject matter concerning opposition to the Bush Administration, which Shaver said was irrelevant to the situation. What concerned Shaver and caused him to investigate the matter was that the location at which the flyer was posted was in violation of the university posting policy because it was off campus and was posted in a non-approved location.
The President of the ISO Joe Knott said the posting policy is unjust and not enforced equally.
“The postering rules, I think are selectively enforced,” Knott said. “This is a content issue aimed at our group specifically.”
Shaver said that once the flyer was brought to his attention he noticed that more problems had arisen with the student group.
“Since we already had a history with this group in regard to the posting policy and meeting space, I sent their president and advisor, on record, an email on Oct. 9, 2002 saying that their scheduling privileges had been revoked until we could set up a meeting to clear this up,” Shaver said. “Unfortunately, since the group had not registered since September 2001, the e-mail went to the old president.”
Knott said he was unaware that the student group had not re-registered for over a year. He said that on the eve of their meeting, Oct. 9 they had filled out the necessary paper work, but were still neglected a meeting space in the student center.
“We filled out the forms- that’s fine… we show up for the meeting expecting to have it, but they keep raising the bar,” he said. “The administration is nit picking and unfairly singling us out.”
Shaver said he was confronted by Knott on that Thursday evening where he reiterated his stance on the suspension. Once Shaver did so, he and Knott agreed to sit down and discuss the issue.
But, the ISO was not satisfied.
“At about 7:30 p.m. the building manager informed me that a group of students were meeting in my office so I went downstairs to investigate and found that the ISO students had decided to use the 228 Resource Room for their meeting space and the outer hallway as a space for literature,” Shaver wrote in an email to The News. “I asked them why they had done this and it was because I had canceled their space.”
Shaver said that he could have called public safety to remove the students, but instead allowed them to meet and informed the building managers as such.
The ISO flyer issued yesterday described the event.
“The ISO held its Thursday meeting as planned, but seeing as our room had been canceled, we instead held it in the office of the campus officials that had banned our group, the Student Activities Office. Director of Student Activities Todd Shaver initially threatened to call campus police to kick us out, but backed down in the face of more than 40 people refusing to leave his office until they were granted their right to have their meeting,” the ISO flyer said. “This was a victory for free speech at Northeastern, but only the beginning of a larger fight to ensure that students are never again denied their rights.”
Knott and Shaver met today to discuss the group’s status. Knott said the meeting was productive and went well but is looking for a formal apology not from Shaver, but from the administration.
“We demand that the administration reinstate the International Socialist Organization on campus as well as all student activist groups banned at NU,” the flyer stated. “And we demand a written apology from President Freeland for unfairly targeting activist groups and stamping out student activism on campus.”
