A number of students who attended last month's Naked Quad Run (NQR) have called into question the administration's assertion that police officers who broke up the event earlier than in the past did not initiate physical force.
In three incidents, the students said, Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) officers inappropriately used force with students participating in NQR who did not themselves get physical first — or at all.
Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman on Dec. 14 said in an e−mail response provided to the Daily by Alexander Reid, associate director of public relations, that police only employed physical force at the Dec. 10 event when students initiated physical contact with them.
"Other than students who initiated physical contact with the officers, no individuals were treated with physical force," Reitman said in his response.
But in one instance at around 10 p.m., near the end of the event, a police officer pushed a naked female student on the course after telling her to stop running, according to the student, junior Katherine Sawyer, and her housemate, junior Stella Dennig, who witnessed the confrontation. All Sawyer did after the officer spoke to her, Dennig and Sawyer said, was walk toward the officer and explain that her clothes were behind him, outside the course.
"I started walking past the officer to get my clothes, at which point he aggressively shoved me backwards, placing both his hands on my shoulders and upper chest and pushing me," Sawyer said in an e−mail.
At around the same time, a male freshman recuperating from running several laps decided to run another after a police officer told him it was his last chance to do so before authorities shut down the run, the freshman said. He requested anonymity due to the nature of the event.
Near Olin Hall, the freshman said, a lone TUPD officer came out into the middle of the course as many other runners continued to participate in the event without being stopped. The freshman's friends continued past the officer without incident, but the officer took aim at the freshman runner, according to the freshman.
"He looked at me and kind of crouched down like he was going to grab me," said the freshman, who at first thought the officer was joking because the officer had let his friends by and because another officer had told him shortly before that he could continue to run. He said he playfully juked to one side to evade the officer.
The officer proceeded to grab the freshman, lift him up, push him against a guardrail and pull one of his arms behind his back, urging him to stop struggling and to cease running, according to the freshman. The officer eventually let him go, he said.
"He didn't tell me to stop before he grabbed me," the freshman said. "He just bent over and picked me up."
Senior Joshua Lord witnessed the alleged confrontation and corroborated much of the freshman's story.
The same officer who lifted up the freshman was later involved in an arrest of a male junior at the event, according to the freshman and Lord, who got the officer's badge number. Reid, Reitman and TUPD Capt. Mark Keith did not provide the officer's name after multiple requests by the Daily over the last month.
Lord and junior Eva Sikes said they witnessed all or part of the arrest and that the student did not initiate any physical force against officers. Reitman and witnesses said that the officers involved in the arrest were in pursuit of another individual whom the university alleges punched an officer in the face.
The junior was arrested and later charged with assault and battery of a police officer, assault and battery of a correctional officer and resisting arrest, according to TUPD's public crime log. His case in Somerville District Court has since been dismissed, according to a court official.
At the time of the arrest, Lord said, a group of students asked the officer not to arrest the junior and politely asked for his badge number. In response, the officer took his handcuffs out and asked the group if "anyone else wanted to get arrested," Lord said.
"I think the officers were just in over their heads trying to calm down a group of drunk naked people," he said of the night's confrontations.
"He did not lay a hand on an officer," Lord, who said he witnessed the arrest, said of the arrested student. "I am sure he did not assault a cop."
Sikes, who said she was standing about 20 feet away during the incident, said all the student did was speak with the officers before they threw him to the ground.
"He asked what was going on and stepped toward them," Sikes said. At one point, "they said, ‘He's resisting,' and then he put his hands up and said, ‘I'm not resisting arrest, I'm not resisting arrest.'"
She said that other witnesses wanted to file a complaint against the officers over the incident, but that officers refused to provide their badge numbers. She said it was clear that the arrested student did not seem to assault the officers.
"I did not see him use any aggression toward them at all," she said.
Reitman and Reid last month declined to provide further details about the case, citing the ongoing investigation; neither would they provide further comment on other student allegations. Keith has not responded to multiple voicemails and e−mails over the last month requesting comment about the police's handling of NQR.
Reitman over the past week did not respond to messages requesting additional comment, and Director of Public Relations Kim Thurler yesterday said that no further information was yet available.
The run, which traditionally takes place on the final day of classes of the fall semester, proceeded relatively smoothly until police officers barricaded the Res Quad course with their bodies and signaled to students that the run was over. The officers were responding to a university decision to end the run early for safety reasons.
"The University and the police reluctantly tolerate the event not because it is thought to be a good idea, but because we think that student safety is better addressed with the event ‘managed' with safety precautions and student and staff monitoring," Reitman said.
The run generally begins at around 10 p.m. and lasts an hour, Reitman said. It started "spontaneously" at 9 p.m. this year, he said, which led the university to decide to cut it off at 10 p.m. Many students continued to show up around 10 p.m., though, unaware of the university's decision. Organizers do not typically announce official start and end times of the run.
A reception led by Programming Board started at 9 p.m., as noted in a student body−wide e−mail sent out two days before the event by the Programming Board and the Tufts Community Union Senate. As in the previous few years, no start time for the actual run was mentioned in the mass e−mail; although a TuftsLife posting by Programming Board said the "event" would start at 9:15 p.m. it did not explicitly refer to the run.
The freshman who was allegedly lifted up and thrown against a guardrail said he believes the university had good intentions in shutting down the event early, but that officers may have gotten frustrated.
"I think that the police completely overreacted to everything that was going on," he said. "They responded like we were protesting or something. … I thought that it was just an inappropriate way of dealing with the problem."
Dennig said she was disappointed with Reitman's inadequate response to students' consternation.
"I fully understand his position and his requirement to support the university, but as [he is] Dean of Student Affairs, I expect a more objective account of his story, and a less heated, defensive account towards students who are merely e−mailing him to express deep concern and frustration," she said last month in an e−mail.
"He has not been addressing these statements of concern, and instead has been reading into them as attacks on the university, which seems irresponsible and unproductive." Editor's note: A version of this article appeared on Jumbo Slice, the Daily's news blog, on Dec. 27, 2010.
