The Kafkaesque parallels didn't end there: not long after this mysterious phone call, Reid was informed by Mathey College Director of Studies Steven Lestition that this already peculiar case would be reviewed by the Residential College Disciplinary Board, consisting of the directors of studies of all five residential colleges and a representative from the Office of the Dean of Student Life. Without informing him of the official indictment against him or allowing him a formal hearing, the committee promptly convicted Reid of "misappropriation of university property" and sentenced him to three months' probation. In a handwritten note from Lestition, the sophomore learned his punishment was based on "precedents" resulting from "previous banner cases."

Presumably no pun was intended, but Reid doesn't find his predicament a laughing matter. "I was found guilty based on a rule meant for people who steal road signs, benches, university capital, whatever that is," says the convicted delinquent. "I took a flag for a celebration that was already over." Though Reid was referred several times to Rights, Rules and Responsibilities, the cryptic tome of university dictums mailed to students in the summer before their freshman year, he says the only law he had violated was "the general 'no stealing' rule." He calls Princeton's attempt at administering justice "ridiculous" and "inconsistent." "I'm living in a real notorious party dorm. There are countless other violations going on around me all the time-alcohol offenses and more serious things, so getting this [discipline] was sort of anticlimactic."

What makes stories like Reid's frightening is their rate of proliferation. More and more undergraduates are receiving disciplinary actions without having the opportunity to defend themselves-sometimes without even knowing such actions are pending against them. The Princeton Tory reported in its March/April issue that one anonymous student was issued a Dean's Warning after attempting to use her roommate's photo-identification card to enter Firestone Library. (The warning, while carrying no express punishment, lasts for the duration of a student's Princeton career, and a second such warning results in automatic probation or suspension.) In addition to the punishing the student who had used the id card, administrators also handed a Dean's Warning to her partner in crime-the roommate who was pictured on the borrowed ID card. According to the article, the second student "was never even informed that disciplinary action was being taken against her" (emphasis added).

Even students who transgress sensible, obvious boundaries find themselves the victims of a disciplinary process that can be vague and arbitrary. Take the case of Alex Heneveld '98, who, during spring break, climbed into an unlocked manhole in front of Dillon Gym, in an Indiana Jones-style effort to seek the fabled subterranean steam tunnels that supposedly connect all the university's buildings. A group of Heneveld's friends who were waiting at the entrance to the tunnel were spotted by two university proctors. The proctors quickly appraised the situation and informed the spectators that they were, in Heneveld's words, "in trouble." In a bizarre twist, the proctors could not enter the shaft themselves because of university regulations. Instead, they had to send one of Heneveld's accomplices down the manhole to retrieve the intrepid explorer. The officers then collected the names of all present, and several days later Heneveld was called into the office of Associate Dean of Student Life Marianne Waterbury.

Then the real trouble began. Waterbury gave the junior three months' probation, a far cry from the Dean's Warning the proctors told him he could expect. Heneveld recalls that in the meeting, Waterbury claimed that whatever rule he had broken was "written three times in Rights, Rules and Responsibilities very clearly." But when the accused asked his prosecutor to show him where in the book the regulation was written, "she thumbed through it, and couldn't find it. Then she called the guy who wrote the book, and he couldn't find it." Heneveld was punished, not unreasonably, for "accessing a restricted confined space," but the most relevant passage he and the Dean could find in the Rights handbook was a clause stating that access to university facilities shall be "governed by existing practices and properties" (p. 10). In the university's defense, Dean Waterbury had no qualms telling Heneveld that such vagaries were deliberate, that these codes "had to be worded loosely."

Though Heneveld recognizes that his steam tunnel exploration was unlawful and represented a potentially serious liability for the university, he maintains that the treatment he received at the hands of the dean's office was, at best, "cursory." "I understand they're busy," he adds, "but there are certain ground rules they have to mention." What he objects to most of all, though, is receiving a disproportionately large punishment while more substantial crimes go unnoticed every day. "I get probation, while people who have keg parties, serve underage drinkers, and do other things far more unethical-they get off with a Dean's Warning."

Officially, Heneveld will be on probation from April 10th to October 31st ("It must stop over the summer," he says. "That means I can come back and get in more trouble."). Though he, like any other university student condemned to disciplinary action, has the right to appeal the decision of the Dean's office, Heneveld's response to this procedure is curt and direct: "I don't think it's worth anyone's time."

If the university's intention is to discourage futher unlawful acts by denying offenders their due process and proscribing them outlandish penalties, then it is evidently failing. Just ask Jeremy Reid, whose own probation finally expired a few days ago. "If I could find a way to keep the banner," says the incorrigible scofflaw, "I'd do it again. [This experience] just made me want to be more careful about where to hang it."

If you see On the Campus writer Dave Itzkoff '98, do not attempt to apprehend him, as he may be armed and dangerous.

Julie Rawe hopes to visit the Mall of America this summer, but not on her honeymoon-she'll be driving across the country with her roommates.