Yrfling Back Again To Provide Recommendations on How to Avoid Fling-related Legal Trouble

Welcome back Flingers,

For those of you who are Freshmen or lived under a rock last year and haven’t heard of us, we exist to inform you of your rights and how to avoid becoming entangled in legal trouble during Fling festivities. The BLCE (Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement) has teamed up with Penn yet again to “keep the event safe” (read: confront anyone who’s visibly intoxicated, causing a nuisance, or openly carrying liquor); however, this blog intends to guide you to make smart decisions in order to avoid confrontation with officers and properly deal with them if all else fails.

We will be consulting with legal professionals and educators to provide you with the most accurate recommendations possible. Please note that we are not lawyers, nor are we providing you with legal counsel. We are just fellow Flingers offering the best possible advice to help everyone enjoy the experience. It’s important to point out that the law is not black and white; interpretation of the law is key and that is what will be provided.

So far we expect this year to have just as much uniformed officer presence as the last, so we encourage you all to look through last year’s posts to gain some initial guidance. Please email us with any questions that haven’t already been answered at yrfling1@gmail.com.

Cheers,

ME & BW

And That's a Wrap on Fling 2014

Hey everybody, I hope you all had a great Fling and got the most of it.

While the DP highlighted the number of citations at this year’s Fling, and student quotes echoed our opinion that the new crackdown promoted an environment of fear and division rather than one of safety and student unity, it is important to note that Fling still, definitely, actually happened.  

This sounds fairly pessimistic, but considered in the historical context of previous Flings, the total number of people directly affected by police action, relative to the huge number of people who were still successfully partying, still remained constant and relatively small within year-to-year variability.    

Based on our experiences, drinking was still super possible if you were even remotely savvy, the closing off of the quad to non-residents (while a huge buzzkill) definitely did stop people from making it a ground-zero public urination disaster, and the destruction and disbanding of block parties was a huge and total bummer.  We’ve heard anecdotal evidence of tipsy students making smarter decisions when confronted with police while Flinging, and would certainly love to hear more if you have any to submit. .  

In the end, it was heartening to see so many people out, enjoying the weather in their chosen states of mind.  As predicted, the police focused on a few easy targets to keep arrest and citation numbers constant, but the vast, VAST majority of students seemed to be willing to persevere and not let the DPS and BCLE scare them into a really really lame weekend.

It was an absolute pleasure writing this blog over the past two weeks and your responses have been super encouraging.  As Fling starts to ramp up again next year, we’ll be there to respond to the latest changes and news regarding BCLE and DPS collaboration.  If you have any questions, stories, or parties at other schools that you wish us to analyze and discuss, feel free to email us at yrfling1@gmail.com.  

Over and out,

-BW & TR

Q&A 2 and Last Post Before Fling

Hey guys, we’re going to try and answer one or two more questions before we wrap up and call it a pre-Fling.  You guys have been great with your support and encouragement.  Here we go, let’s get to it:

Can I get in trouble for carrying around a flask? How about an empty flask?

A flask is a perpetually open container.  You can’t carry around one of those in public generally.  For a flask to be considered empty, it should be as clean as possible and not smell strongly of liquor.  Otherwise, it’s comparable to carrying around a solo cup that you just dumped out in terms of its contents.  

However, unlike that solo cup, a flask cannot be discovered on your person without you being searched.  So unless you are seen drinking from it and then quickly shoving it into your pocket, it’s as difficult for cops to establish probable cause as it is for any other offence that we’ve discussed in this blog.  Without probable cause, you can’t be searched.  

Are you guys lawyers?

Good question.  Absolutely not, and we are most definitely not providing you with legal counsel.  We are concerned Penn students, working with professors and law students to assemble publicly available knowledge into a resource that everybody can use to protect themselves from harassment and misinformation.  

And with that, we’re going to start enjoying our Fling.  It’s been a fun 3 days working on this and we intend to post updates periodically throughout the weekend, as well as a post mortem after Fling addressing anything that may have happened.  We’ll be out and about Fling all weekend in our yrFling tanks, like a bunch of schmucks.  Come say hi if you see us.

Cheers and get at it,

-BW&TR

News Analysis and Opinion: DPS Admits Open Collaboration with BCLE

In light of today’s revelations in the DP, "Liquor police: 'Our presence was requested'",  we thought it prudent to write a follow-up on our previous long post analyzing the possible repercussions of the now-official cooperation between DPS and BCLE on campus.  Previously, as reported by the DP, Division of Public Safety (DPS) VP Maureen Rush responded to complaints about BCLE activity by claiming that they “...[have] blanket authority throughout Pennsylvania to do anything they want.”   However, throughout this blog, we repeatedly identified areas of, and expounded upon, the BCLE’s specific lack of blanket authority beyond regular state police. We can only conclude that this year’s invitation of BCLE officers to go beyond busting off-campus parties, to being positioned on-campus in dorms and quite probably in the quad, is a continuation of Maureen Rush’s campaign to completely dismantle Spring Fling in its current and most beloved form.  Since we can’t know her motivation, we’ll take a break for a second from veering this post in the op-ed direction and for a moment we'll address the more pertinent legal issues.

Given That My Rights On-Campus Are Already Limited by Codes of Housing and Penn Student Conduct, How Will the On-Campus Presence of BCLE Officers Collaborating with Alcohol Monitors Affect Me?

Our previous post used historical precedent to establish common patterns of punitive behavior for alcohol monitors and DPS officers.  Typically, you would receive a small citation with no legal ramifications if you were caught drunk and underage on campus or with alcohol in your room.  However, this is NOT a typical Fling.  If you are caught drinking in a room, and as we previously stated, Penn staff members can enter at any time to enforce the alcohol policy of the University as interpreted by the house dean (which usually implies a completely dry Quad for Fling), the staff members are now certainly allowed to call in BCLE officers and charge you with a crime.  This is now a very real possibility in light of Maureen Rush’s recent statements.

Furthermore, if you are wandering around the quad tipsy, you should be aware that should you draw the attention of an alcohol monitor, the situation may significantly differ now that there will possibly be BCLE officers present.  Since you used your PennCard to enter the quad, or have a guest pass, the alcohol monitor can probably ask you to produce it, which would allow him to make a reasonable guess at your age, and then by proxy may allow a called-in BCLE officer to have reasonable suspicion that you have committed the crime of underage drinking.  Keep in mind that without a Penn staff member involved, a BCLE officer can still not force you to produce your PennCard or any other form of identification, as this would constitute unreasonable search.  Additionally, since you are now on private property, a BCLE officer without an alcohol monitor cannot stop you for public intoxication.  That being said, in the reverse situation, an alcohol monitor CAN stop you for being drunk and ask for your PennCard, which might result, as previously mentioned, in BCLE officers being called in and charging you if you are underage.    

It is the unfortunate reality now that you have more guaranteed rights off-campus than you do on it.  Furthermore, the farther you go from campus, the less likely it seems that BCLE officers will care about your actions.  Some frats and societies have even taken this to the logical conclusion of moving Fling activities out of state.  And this begs the question, if you are Flinging that far from Penn’s campus, are you even really Flinging anymore, or are you just at another party with a few, self-selected bros?  To this end, we’ll address the following question:

In the opinion of this blog’s authors, what are some possible motivations and outcomes of this newfound sense of collaboration between the DPS and BCLE?

Maureen Rush’s job is to both direct the Division of Public Safety, who are responsible for enhancing the quality of life, safety, and security of our community, and to additionally manage all aspects of Law Enforcement, which includes mediating interactions with the BCLE and Philadelphia Police.  Given unconfirmed reports of BCLE officers at Fling 2013 parties discussing required arrest quotas, presumably as directed by superior officers or state officials looking to bolster claims of being “tough on students,” we wonder if at this point Mrs. Rush’s dual roles represent a growing conflict of interest.  While there is always a trade-off between security and privacy for members of a society (I.E. Penn students), Mrs. Rush’s dual obligations to both enhance our quality of life and increase our safety allow her to claim victory without specific regard to either privacy or security in the case of this year’s Spring Fling.  

One would argue that a good place to start in motivating this drastically-increased police presence would be to provide clear and public statistics demonstrating the need for increased safety on campus around Fling, specifically demonstrating a trend of increased alcohol-related violence, hospitalizations, and sexual assaults.  Mrs. Rush and the DP have done neither of these, and as such it seems to difficult to believe that there are any obvious trends in the data supporting a proportionate police response of this magnitude.

Instead, through a combination of increased citations around Fling and mandating more restrictive and numerous registered parties, the university officials are driving students to partake in conversely much more unsafe behavior.  There seems to still remain a massive demand on campus for alcohol among students of all ages.  This is a fundamental reality of college life here at Penn and the university has done little to nothing to address it.  What they have instead affected, is the supply of safe venues for alcohol consumption among underage students.  Registered parties are laughably restrictive in how they provide and allow you to consume alcohol.  Underage students wishing to attend these “parties” tipsy must instead engage in clearly unsafe binge-drinking  behavior such as “pregaming,” or ripping 8 shots so that you can find a well-lit frat basement tolerable.  This, as well as the lack of an “open-door policy” in dorms, or something comparable, incentivises students to seek out off-campus, unregistered parties.  And these parties are a mixed bag.  Some of them are just small gatherings associated with teams, clubs, or friends.  Others are fairly sketchy affairs run by societies built out of the remnants of former fraternities, kicked off of campus for dubious behavior and most definitely not the places where you would want to direct hapless freshmen in the name of increasing campus safety and security.  

To summarize all of this, the possibility of a Fling without fear of legal repercussions is increasingly being restricted to those willing, or even allowed, to attend parties run by shady, unregulated organizations.  The few underage Penn students with the social and financial capital to acquire fake IDs and attend downtown parties or invited to out-of-state parties are the only ones for whom a harassment-free and proper Fling experience can be guaranteed this year.  We at this blog believe that Fling is a central Penn experience, and should be available to all Penn students.  The DPS’ actions this year are merely just promoting further unsafe behavior behind closed doors and an increasingly stratified Penn experience.

-BW&TR

On the Subject of Medical Amnesty

It is important, amongst all of this party talk, to briefly touch upon the subject of Penn’s medical amnesty policy, as outlined in Section II-A-3 of the school’s Alcohol and Drug policy:

“No student seeking medical treatment for an alcohol or other drug-related overdose will be subject to University discipline for the sole violation of using or possessing alcohol or drugs. This policy shall extend to another student seeking help for the intoxicated student.”

In other words, if you or a friend is in need of medical attention, you will not face discipline as a Penn student in the process of seeking help for them.  However, this still does not exempt you from state and federal laws.  A police officer may still try and pursue legal action if he becomes involved in this process.  To this end, we recommend that if you are seeking attention for something that is not time-sensitive, you should seek out a university staff member, security guard, or public safety officer.  They will help you get medical attention for yourself or your friend without involving Philadelphia police.  This will ensure that the medical amnesty policy is in full effect for all of those who are trying to do the right thing.  

All of this being said, if there is a real medical emergency (I.E. somebody isn’t clearly breathing) call MERT at 511 if within the Penn Patrol Zone or call 911 if outside of it. Do not hesitate.  

Update! As commented below by a helpful reader: "...if there is a medical emergency on campus, people should call for MERT.  Call 511 from any landline on-campus phone, or 215-573-3333 from any cell phone or landline within the Penn Patrol Zone (43rd to 30th streets between Market and Baltimore streets). This will connect you with a dispatcher at the Department of Public Safety, who will then dispatch MERT.  MERT and the Penn Police will have a faster response time than calling 911, which would direct you to the Philadelphia Police department."

Gotta be a nanny for a hot sec sometimes.

-BW&TR

Wandering Around: Tipsy Walks, Alcohol Monitors, Cops, and Breathalyzers

Update! In light of recent news regarding open, on-campus collaboration between the DPS and the BCLE, we have written a follow-up post which updates some of the legal analysis in this post.

Many of your questions have focused on one of the most common situations at Fling:  If you’ve been drinking, and you are walking around either Penn property (I.E. the Quad) or the streets just west of campus, can you be stopped, and what might happen if you are?  In this post, we’ll tackle these two situations separately, addressing in the process your possible interactions with Penn staff and security, as well as Philadelphia or state police (BCLE officers, for example).  

On-Campus Wandering and Booze

As mentioned in this Under the Button article (Which also mentions us! And calls us nerds? Which is cool I guess? Do you even lift? What?),  there will be a doubling of the number of Penn alcohol monitors on and off campus through the weekend.  As defined, between this presentation about Penn’s efforts to streamline the registered party system (which has its own set of issues which we’ll address some day, after Fling) and this FAQ about hosting registered parties:

“Alcohol monitors are part-time staff members of the Office of Alcohol and Other Drug Program Initiatives.  The monitors are present on campus on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights to ensure that all students are following the guidelines presented in the University's Alcohol and Other Drug Policy.  Alcohol monitors work with sober hosts to maintain a safe party environment and address any issues that may arise.  Alcohol monitors also roam campus over the weekends to make sure that the University alcohol policy is being followed.”  

The monitors, as well as GAs/RAs, have the power to enter your room at any time in an on-campus residence as per Section 8 of your occupancy agreement for inspection of adherence to the university alcohol and drug policy.  So while it is unusual for your room to be raided while you are there, expect the possibility of intrusions into on-campus Fling drinking activities, especially in any room in the Quad.

While this seems especially grim for your chances of enjoying Fling on-campus, if you manage to find a way to drink without being explicitly caught with alcohol by staff members, your protections as tipsy person on Penn property are a little better.  Obviously, if you’re a loud, stumbly drunk, vomit in your hair, tripping on your heels and the like, you might give an alcohol monitor cause to assume that you have been drinking and proceed with disciplinary action.  But if you’re keeping to yourself and a monitor stops you, remember that they are not police officers.  While it might violate university policy, it’s not a crime to lie to them, and they have limited ability to determine through breathalyzer and blood tests that you have actually been drinking.  That being said, Penn has been deliberately opaque about the powers and limitations of these staff members.  You have certainly limited your expectation of privacy by enrolling as student here, and so be aware that there might be more hidden clauses.  However, based on historical precedent, simply being underage and drunk on Penn’s campus has rarely been grounds for anything but light disciplinary action.  Alcohol monitors have been known to call in police upon discovering unregistered distribution of alcohol at organized parties, especially to minors, but there seem to be few examples of them calling in police upon simply suspecting that an underage student has had a few, but reasonable, number of drinks.  

Off-Campus Streets and Talking to Actual Police

On your way between your dorm and your off-campus activities, there will most certainly be police officers roaming around.  You may encounter a mix of Penn police, which typically have been helpful in promoting general safety and not just boosting arrest numbers, and Philadelphia/BCLE officers, who are typically looking to harass and arrest you on this particular weekend.  

Presuming that you have been drinking, first and foremost, you should try not to draw attention to yourself.  Screaming, skipping, singing loudly, stumbling, and pissing on stuff are activities that we would advise against.  

That being said, a police officer does not need probable cause to simply ask you a question.  As we have previously emphasized, you should respond immediately to the officer: “Am I free to go?”  Any other response might incriminate yourself or somebody else.  If they say no, you are being detained and you should refer to our post about your right to remain silent.  The officer might try and escalate the situation, but in Pennsylvania, you are only obligated to give a verbal statement of your legal name.  Furthermore, detaining you without clear probable cause would lead to any other subsequent discoveries being inadmissible in legal proceedings.  

Simply looking young does not constitute sufficient probable cause.  For example, cops can ask you where you are going, ask if you have been drinking, or claim to smell to liquor on your breath.  But remember, having had a drink or two and then walking around is not in itself a crime; it’s only a crime if you are under 21 or clearly intoxicated.  Without knowledge of your status as a freshman or sophomore (I.E., that you’re on your way back to the quad), they wouldn’t be able to establish probable cause that you have actually committed a crime and therefore would have poor grounds to detain you.  

If you are being detained, and the subject of a breathalyzer comes up, you should be aware of the limitations surrounding the usage of those devices.  First and foremost, because a breathalyzer test requires your cooperation, it’s comparable to answering an officer’s question, and you can simply refuse to comply and say that if the this conversation is to continue, you would like a lawyer.  It is important to remember that the outcome of a breathalyzer test is not required to be known to arrest you for public drunkenness.  If you are clearly intoxicated, that is a crime and you can be arrested.  The police will merely use the result of the breathalyzer test to bolster their assessment of you.  Unless you are absolutely sure that you are of age and have not been drinking, it is usually not favorable for you to comply with a breathalyzer test.  Blowing even a 0.01 when being underage, which can even happen without drinking (due to inhaling paint thinner or gas fumes, for example), can lead to negative consequences.  

If you are being detained and refuse a breathalyzer test, the absolute worst case scenario is that the police compel you to accompany them to the station where they will attempt to draw your blood and directly measure your BAC.  Refusal of this test could constitute as admission of guilt based on the 1983 case South Dakota V. Neville.  However, and this is the cool part, in 2012, the US Supreme Court ruled in Missouri v. McNeely that a warrant must first be issued by a judge before a blood drawing can be forcibly administered.  By the time that this occurs, your BAC will probably have significantly lowered, and despite this fact, the police cannot still try and extrapolate your possible BAC at the time of your detainment.  

(Mad props to one of our law student readers who helped us navigate this quite complicated issue and establish legal precedent.  It was super awesome.)

Hopefully, we have addressed here all of the common situations in which officials, university or law enforcement, might try and bother you while you’re going about your merriment.  If you can think of any other situations that might arise or complications, feel free to comment below or email us at yrfling1@gmail.com.  

Remember fellow Flingers, we’re all in this together.  It was, after all, the dude who founded our university who said “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” So spread the word around, help us by asking more questions, and please don't turn on each other in fear that somehow a slight Penn alcohol citation would ruin your entire life.

Cheers,

-BW&TR