One week before Succos vacation, a Yeshiva student - in the company of two friends - was shot while in the Raoul Wallenberg Park on Amsterdam Avenue between 188th and 190th Streets, adjacent to University housing. Complicated circumstances and an incomplete investigation led to the dismissal of one of the victim's friends from Yeshiva University. Because the Administration has refused to speak directly on the record and due to the sensitive nature of this story, The Commentator has removed the names of all students for their protection.

The Shooting

Late in the evening on Thursday, September 20, three first-year students went to the park to smoke hookah, a type of flavored tobacco. Although hookah is a legal substance for those over the age of eighteen, the students nevertheless decided to find a private area where their smoke would not bother anyone, so they trekked up to the park and began to smoke.

Within minutes of their arrival, all three students report that they heard gunshots fired in their vicinity. The poorly lit park concealed the identity of the shooter and the direction of the bullets. Panicked, the students froze until one of them screamed as he was struck in the chest. Blood soaking his shirt, the wounded student ran with his two friends from the park. While fleeing the scene, the projectile, later determined to be a beebee pellet, fell from the wounded student's body.

Returning to the center of campus, the students informed security of what had transpired. Security personnel called Hatzolah and told the dispatcher that a student was shot. According to one security official, it is commonplace to call Hatzolah instead of a city ambulance because Hatzolah has units on the Yeshiva campus.

A Hatzolah member from the Y-Unit was the first to respond to the call. Arriving at the scene, he found the wounded student slumped on the green bench outside of Strenger Hall, his shirt soaked with blood. Cutting the shirt from the victim's body to get to the wound, the emergency worker found that although the projectile did not pierce the shirt, it had punctured the victim's skin. After calling for backup, the Hatzoloh member began on-the-scene treatment, bandaged the student's wound, and transported the student to an area hospital for further care.

The Investigation

With the victim on his way in the Hatzolah ambulance, the other two students traveled to the hospital on their own. At the hospital, a New York Police Department officer approached the group and asked them for official statements about what had occurred. As they repeated their story a number of times, the students recalled additional facts concerning the incident from earlier that evening. Throughout the questioning, the police officer never questioned the emergency medical technician that treated the student at the scene.

Returning to campus, the two unhurt students met with University Security in Belfer Hall. There, the students were asked to give formal statements about the event. The security official conducting the investigation strongly accused the students of lying and fabricating their entire story.

"There are multiple holes in your story," the official was reported as saying. Developing their own version of events, Security insisted that the students were fooling around with a gun when it accidentally went off, shooting one of them in the chest. Security asserted that after the student was hit, the others had panicked and concocted a convoluted story to cover their actions and receive the necessary medical attention.

Upon searching the students and their rooms, security personnel were unable to recover the gun or any other evidence corroborating Security's account of the events. However, one of the students did inform Security that they would find alcohol and possibly drug-related paraphernalia in his room. Later that evening, the student recalled that he told security about the alcohol and other items in his room in order to fully cooperate with the investigation of the shooting. He did so knowing that possession of alcohol was against the dormitory rules and that, being underage, it was illegal. "He told them in good faith," relayed a confidant of the student. "He wanted security's confusion over the shooting to be cleared up, so he cooperated beyond what was necessary."

Coercion

At this point, according to the students, Security had determined that the student in possession of the alcohol was the one responsible for the entire shooting incident. Security personnel informed the student that he would be expelled from the University unless he signed a statement, drafted by Security, stating that he lied about the incident to Security and the police and that he indeed shot his friend. Told that he would be thrown out of school for possession of a controlled substance if he did not sign the form and acquiesce to security's version of events, the student signed the statement.

Over the following week and Succos vacation, phone calls between the student and Associate Dean of Students Dr. Chaim Nissel led Student Services to recommend that the student be expelled from the University. But rather than expel the student outright, the University offered him the chance to withdraw quietly, transcript intact. Convinced that this was his best option, the student chose to withdraw without a fight. After Succos vacation, he was permitted to return to the dormitory to pack up his things and go home.

According to friends of the student, Student Services contacted the student's parents and informed them that their eighteen-year-old son had a serious drinking problem and that they were recommending he find help. In response, the student's parents kicked him out of their house and severed all contact with him.

Currently living on his own, the student is working as a telemarketer and is attempting to earn enough money to pay for a local college, close to some of his other relatives. In a recent letter to a friend, he lamented that because he "needs to leave so early in the morning for his job, [he] no longer has the opportunity to daven Shacharis."

Students Challenge University Conclusion

Upon returning to Yeshiva after vacation and learning of the incident, a number of worried students began to press the Office of Student Services for information concerning the student's dismissal, hoping that they could correct the University's misconceptions about the episode and convince Yeshiva to reinstate the student.

The students' concerns focused on two primary areas: first, the way in which Student Services reacted to the situation, and second, the tactics used by Security in conducting their investigation.

With regard to Student Services, one matter about which students inquired was the number of character references the Office sought before making their decision. To this, Nissel admitted that he had failed to contact the student's residence advisor or any other student who could have spoken about the student; but, he asserted, there was no need for him to explain his actions or how he arrived at his decision not to interview any of the student's friends and acquaintances. Nissel did note, however, that he had spoken to someone who works in the yeshiva that the student attended in Israel.

According to a student activist involved in the situation, the University's refusal to interview character references is indeed bizarre, in that one well-respected student approached a member of the Student Services department and told him that if there was to be an investigation that he should be contacted. This student explained that he made this request because he possessed unique knowledge of the situation and that it would certainly be beneficial to the investigation. The student was never contacted.

Another concern lodged in the direction of the Office of Student Services was the manner in which information released by the student voluntarily was used against him. According to Dean Himber, the Office of Student Services can act both as a counselor and as an administrator in that, when a student approaches them, they are counselors, but when they need to approach a student, they behave as administrators.

As many student pointed out, Himber's assertion is important because in this instance, the student voluntarily informed security about the alcohol and other paraphernalia in his room. Yet, this information was used against him and not only got him removed from school, but from his home as well. To this, the Office of Student Services responded that they could not speak about the issue "as it addresses a specific case and a specific student."

Resident Advisors are left wondering whether or not to trust Student Services and the Housing Office with information relating to their assigned students. "I don't think I can ever say another word to them," explained one RA. "How am I to know when they will use it against the student and when they will not," he questioned.

A former peer counselor expressed his concern over the inability for students to effectively seek help or psychological treatment anymore from Student Services. "They have debunked their own claim that they could be both counselors and administrators," he lamented.

Relating more towards the processes Security followed, another student activist inquired as to why security handled the matter without the presence of Student Services. Other than the lateness of the hour and the immediate nature of the investigation, no immediate answer was available to this question.

While security repeatedly claimed that there existed significant gaps in the student's account of that night, a number of inconsistencies remain in the University's approach to the event. A security official claims that Security and the police concurred that the trajectory of the projectile and the location of the incident in the park led them to conclude that the gun was fired at a close range; and, therefore, it must have been the students themselves who shot the gun. However, one member of the NYPD disputed this possibility based on the fact that the pellet did not tear the victim's shirt. "Had the gun been fired from a close range," explained the official, "it would have torn right through his shirt."

Additionally, Security has neither provided the name of the investigating police officer nor confirmed the existence of an official police report of the incident. Perhaps more alarming is that after "tossing the students' rooms," as one floor mate put it, they were unable to find the suspected weapon.

As these issues were slowly brought to the attention of Dr. Nissel, he finally affirmed that if the student who was thrown out feels that he has a case, he should appeal the Office's decision and they will determine if he should be readmitted. This response by Nissel has sparked a plethora of questions. "A cursory glance at the appeals process will point out that it is even more flawed than the initial investigation," remarked one student familiar with the situation.

Nissel explained that the decision to dismiss someone from the university is theoretically made by a committee of persons in the Student Services Office in consultation with all relevant parties. The suspect then has the opportunity to appeal to the Dean of Students.

Himber tried to dismiss this inherent overlap that places him on both the initial decision-making committee and the seats him as the sole appeals judge, by stating that he knew little of the case. "If that is so," reasoned the student, "then Dr. Nissel is the only one who 'investigates,' tries and convicts. There is no committee," he concluded.

A second problem with Nissel's assertion that the dismissed student has the right to appeal the decision is that the student possessed these same arguments the day he was dismissed but was not given the opportunity at the time to defend himself. "[He] should have been given the opportunity to present [his defense] then, without coercion or threats," maintained a friend. "This simply amounts to Student Services deciding that he is guilty and then giving him the opportunity to prove his innocence."

A final flaw in Nissel's assertion that the student could appeal his dismissal to the Office of Student Services lies in the fact that the student could not appeal the decision to Student Services because, technically, he was never dismissed. According to Himber, once a student withdraws from Yeshiva, only the Office of Admissions is authorized to readmit them. Asked what a student's options might be if he were forced to withdraw from the University, Himber contended that the student could reapply, but he would go no further, invoking the policy not to speak about a specific student's case.

One student leader questioned Himber about Student Services' absence from the entire initial investigation process. "How could security interrogate and coerce a student without Student Services present first? How could they threaten to throw someone out of school? That is not their job." While again declining to speak on the record about the particular case in question, Himber acknowledged that, indeed, only Student Services - and not Security - can make a decision to remove a student from the school. So why in this case did Security personnel threaten to expel the students if they refused to sign Security's document? Why did Student Services, once they knew that this occurred, do nothing about it? Himber refused to respond to these questions, again arguing that confidentiality about the particular case in question must be maintained.

Finally, Resident Advisors are asking why protocol was broken in this case. Usually, when a student is caught with any type of illegal or controlled substance in the dormitory, as a first-time offender, he is put on probation and watched carefully by the Housing Department and the Office of Student Services. In this case, however, Student Services simply threw him out, seemingly on his first offense. Himber challenged this contention on the grounds that the University is not required to extend a probationary period to first-time offenders. Although he again insisted on not speaking about this specific case, he stated that Student Services generally "does work with probation first; however, there is no blanket rule, we determine things on a case-by-case basis."

Complicating this matter is the lack of agreement concerning the grounds for which the student was dismissed. Some Security officials maintain that the student was forced out of the University because of drug use, while others claim that it was alcohol abuse that led to his expulsion. Interestingly, although Security possesses a signed document in which the student admits to shooting his friend with a firearm, the shooting incident was not cited by any Security official as the reason for the dismissal of the student.

Future Plans

Presently, students are continuing to lobby on behalf of the dismissed student. However, as the student lives out of town and by all accounts is a very shy person, his participation in the advocacy on his own behalf has been difficult for him to manage. Dr. Nissel suggested to a number of people that the student simply return to New York and handle matters himself. However, friends of the student insist that such a recommendation is untenable because of the time and money involved in the student returning to New York. "Especially," added one Yeshiva College student, "when his prospects are vague at best."

Because Student Services continually refuses to speak about the incident directly, it is no simple task to ascertain what course of action constitutes the student's best option. Additionally, many students have raised questions as to whether, given their tepid support for the student from the outset, Student Services can be trusted as they intimate that a potential resolution favorable to the student remains in the realm of possibility.

Student Rights

Claiming a fundamental deficiency in proper due process and procedure for disciplinary action within Yeshiva, student leaders have begun to forge a broad alliance towards gaining official student rights. While the ideas vary widely, student leaders have agreed upon specific fundamentals.

Students are demanding that Yeshiva, in written form, immediately issue some form of acknowledgement of student rights. Leaders further agree that university-wide acceptance and enforcement of these rights must be a prerequisite for an established system.

Yeshiva students may have found an unexpected ally in their crusade for student rights. Yeshiva Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Morton Lowengrub told The Commentator that he remembered an established set of student rights in Indiana University. Previously a top administrator there, Lowengrub asserted that the rights worked well in protecting students, making them consciously aware of the rights to which they were entitled.

Said one elected student leader, "We will try our best to help this student. The time has come for us to come together as people and stand for the most fundamental principles of society…If we have no truth and if we have no rights, we have nothing."