U.S. Gov't. Checks on Mideast Students
CoolHandDuke TheBlueDevilMan
"In Sweeping Campus Canvasses, U.S. Checks on Mideast Students"
By JACQUES STEINBERG
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/national/12STUD.html
In the two months since the attacks of Sept. 11, federal investigators
have contacted administrators on more than 200 college campuses to
collect information about students from Middle Eastern countries, the
most sweeping canvass of the halls of academia since the cold war, the
colleges say.
The agents have asked what subjects the students are studying, whether
they are performing well and where they are living.
They have also questioned the students themselves, asking about their
views on Osama bin Laden, the names of their favorite restaurants and
their plans for after graduation.
The investigations have put the universities in a difficult position,
pitting the government's interest in security against the institutions'
desire to protect students' privacy and to avoid engaging in racial
profiling.
But in the end, a national survey of college registrars found, nearly
all the universities approached have readily supplied answers to the
government's questions, largely because the law appears to be on the
government's side.
The agents, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Immigration
and Naturalization Service, have used those conversations as the basis
for interviewing dozens of students.
One Saudi Arabian student, who attends the University of Colorado at
Denver, said federal investigators closed their interview with him by
saying, "Expect to see us again."
The college officials who have been sought out — including those at
Columbia University, Tufts University and San Diego State University —
said that the often unannounced visits and the urgent lines of inquiry
were throwbacks to a decade or more ago, when it was not uncommon for a
federal agent to ask a dean a question like "Did Vladimir show up at the
lab today?"
Larry Bell, director of international education at the University of
Colorado in Denver, said that federal agents had visited his office or
the registrar's office five times in recent weeks.
Mr. Bell said that the agents had interviewed at least 50 students from
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and other Arab countries.
He said he did not believe any had been arrested or linked to a
terrorist cell.
"The students are not sure what the purpose of the questions are," Mr.
Bell said. "But they know that the government isn't interviewing any
students from Germany."
Mindful that a terrorist with a student visa participated in the Sept.
11 attacks, the federal agencies said they were seeking to mine further
leads and to begin making good on the president's promise to ensure that
the half-million foreign students studying here were accounted for on
their campuses.
"One of the reasons they want to know where a student lives is so that
they can come find them when necessary or simply watch them," said
Catheryn Cotten, director of the international student office at Duke
University, who has yet to receive such a visit but has been in contact
with many colleges that have. "It's not that they want to arrest the
students. They want to keep track of them coming and going."
Still, the sudden appearance of agents in college buildings and the
government's plans to expand such surveillance have heightened the
anxiety on campuses already jittery because of the terrorist attacks and
the anthrax scares.
"It's just very hard to squeal on your own students," said James O.
Freedman, a former president of Dartmouth College. "You don't want
students to get the perception that you are in league with those who may
be out to get them."
The Saudi student in Colorado, who asked not to be identified, said that
two agents from the F.B.I. and another from the I.N.S. arrived at his
apartment unannounced on a Wednesday evening about a month ago.
The agents said they had gotten his name from two other Saudi students
who had been briefly detained after they had been observed taking
photographs of the university's sports arena. The photographs were for a
photography class, Mr. Bell said.
In his interview with the authorities, the student, a 26-year-old
landscape architecture major, said he was asked about his classes,
activities and politics. "I was afraid," he said. "I know they can do
anything they want to you."
Still, he understood the situation. "I don't blame them," he said.
"Thousands of innocent people were killed in a few seconds and a few
hours."
In a survey by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and
Admissions Officers, 220 colleges reported that they had been contacted
at least once by the F.B.I. or the I.N.S. after Sept. 11 about the
status of foreign students. Nearly a quarter of those institutions
reported multiple contacts.
A federal immigration official, who insisted on anonymity, said that the
colleges had been identified in the belief that foreign students there
might have information that would assist the government's inquiry.
"These visits are a component of an ongoing criminal investigation," the
official said.
Under federal immigration law, the government is entitled to much of the
information it has sought. As a condition of most education visas, a
foreign student signs a waiver permitting a college to let immigration
officials know when the student arrived on campus, how many credits the
student had earned and whether the student's field of study or mailing
address had changed.
Though college administrators are required to collect such information,
they said that the government asked them to stop sending it to
Washington years ago, in part because the I.N.S. could not scale the
mountain of paperwork.
But in the weeks since Sept. 11, federal officials have been
aggressively gathering such records and more. The colleges comply for
financial and legal reasons. By alienating the government, a school
could risk losing its authority to request visas for foreign students,
most of whom pay full tuition.
There is a long tradition of law enforcement watching over college
campuses in times of crisis. But Sol Gittleman, provost of Tufts
University and a professor there for nearly 40 years, said he could not
recall when outside agencies had descended on so many campuses so
quickly. "Unprecedented," Mr. Gittleman said. "We've never had a
national emergency like this."
The scrutiny of students of Arab descent has so far touched off little
protest, a stark contrast to the outrage when American-born students
have been profiled by university or law enforcement officials. In 1992,
the campus of the State University of New York College at Oneonta was
riven for weeks after the college provided the state police with a list
of every black and Hispanic student in an investigation of an assault on
an elderly woman.
In the current investigation, federal agents have contacted Columbia
University two or three times and interviewed at least one foreign
student, said Virgil Renzulli, a spokesman for the school. Mr. Renzulli
said he did not believe that the student was arrested.
At San Diego State University, the government has sought information
about many of the 60 students from the Middle East because, university
officials said, two of the hijackers lived in San Diego and had ties to
the Muslim community.
University officials said that the authorities later arrested one San
Diego State student and transported him to New York, where he was being
held as a material witness.
But the investigation on the San Diego campus continues. On Wednesday,
immigration officials delivered a written request to the university
seeking information about the locations and studies of 40 students from
Arab nations, a request that the university intends to honor.
"It's upsetting," said Jane Kalionzes, associate director of the
international student center. "Even though we've always known that
reporting is a part of our job, we haven't done it in so long."
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The Duke Blue Devils: 2001 & 2002 NCAA Basketball Champions
http://goduke.fansonly.com "They hate because they fear."
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