Protecting Your Rights in a College Dorm

hi I'm Scott with Flex your rights this time of year every year we get a lot of questions about the rights of students living in the dorms on college campuses and it's it's really an interesting situation you know on the one hand you have lots of freedom especially if you're new to dorm life it's wonderful to be away from your folks and to be away from from you know your brothers and sisters that might be tattling on you and so you know on the one hand you have all of this freedom but then when you discover quickly as well as that you don't actually have a lot of privacy you've got a roommate right there that maybe you're getting used to you've gotten RA down the hall that you know might be cool might not you don't even know yet you've got campus security that are you know different from one campus to the next and so you never really know what you're dealing with it takes a second to get used to it and what happens I think is a lot of folks get excited about their newfound freedom but it's easy to get carried away with that you can make some some mistakes and it's also easy with so many other students around people partying and enjoying themselves that you could end up getting in trouble for something that someone else did so you got to watch your back and you definitely have to know your rights when you're living in the dorms I love dorm life myself I have a great time but I also saw a lot of people get in trouble and so I think it's a situation that you want to give some thought to and be prepared I actually worked as a judicial advocate myself when I was in college which meant that I represented students who were accused of misconduct violations on campus so you know sort of my responsibility to learn the Student Conduct code understand all the rules and then help folks who maybe got a little bit jammed up just to make sure that their rights on campus were respected and that people weren't punished unfairly so I learned a lot about what the what the campus environment is like and how rules are enforced on campuses but it varies from one place to the next and so that's really the first lesson when it comes to knowing your rights on a college campus it's something that I can't just sit here and spell out for you the reality is that you have to look on this at the specific policies that exist on the campus where you are going to school and so you know how the rules are enforced and what the penalties are and what kind of behaviors are tolerated or not tolerated is going to vary from one place to the next so I can't just enumerate this for you so you need to do some of that research on your own and then your specific rights living in the dorm that's another thing that's going to vary from one campus to the next so you want to look at your rental agreement you know look at what you're signing and then you can understand you know the basics of what to expect so you may have have specific you know a specific threshold of protection in the event that an RA or security officer wants to come into your room so you need to know that because if you get into a situation where somebody wants to come in and you don't want them to knowing the rules and be able to articulate yourself clearly it's going to really help you in that situation so that's really the first thing regardless however of what the specific school policies are about dorm rooms and what your specific rights may be you're still going to want to handle an encounter in your space in the same way that you would anywhere else even off-campus so for starters if they ask to search your room you're always going to want to say no now you want to be very polite here but let them know you know listen if you have the authority to search the room I'll be cooperative but I'm not agreeing to be searched and that's sort of the same way you'd handle that situation off-campus as well you know the same goes for answering incriminating questions you never want to incriminate yourself you don't want to admit to something that can get you in trouble and so if they're being persistent you know say that I'd like some kind of legal representation before discussing that matter with you thank you very much and of course you don't want to let anyone in if there's something that you don't want them to see and now this gets tricky on a college campus because the room doesn't belong to you you know if it belongs to the school so if it's a state school it belongs to the state if it's a private school it belongs to the trustees and so you know in either case somebody else may have the keys to your room other people have a way of getting in but as long as you're not the one just letting them in you know that situation could end up protecting you and if you are accused of some type of misconduct on campus you know you're either gonna get arrested by by actual law enforcement if they're present or you're going to get have a charge filed against you by the campus security in which case you'd appear before some sort of a judicial board on Camp and in either case there's rules of evidence and they have to prove that that they legitimately caught you doing whatever it was that you did and so if any rights of yours were violated that's something that you can use to protect yourself so so keep all of that in mind and know the policies on your campus and then this is another thing you want to talk to the people around you and find out how those policies are enforced and so that's kind of the long and short of it but I have a few other items I just wanted to cover based on my experience actually helping students who got in trouble on campus I'm going to share just a couple of sort of practical tips that aren't really not really no you're right stuff per se but things that I think will help you if you're worried about about how to keep yourself out of trouble and when you're in school number one is just to keep in mind that people talk you know you're packed into that dorm room you know your neighbors might be able to hear you talking through the walls you know your chattery in the bathroom it's just really hard to keep your business to yourself so be careful and if you don't make an effort to protect your own privacy neither will anyone else so if you're chattering a lot other people will assume that you don't really care about your privacy and they'll be happy to share your private information with other people so keep in mind people can hear what you're doing they can smell what you're doing so people people know what you're up to and so make careful choices about about what what you reveal about yourself to other people because they won't always have your best interests in mind number two you know keep in mind that that College is as much about relationships as it is about rules so you want to know your neighbors know your Ras and and suddenly everybody's got your back you know you can relax just a little bit you know it's scary at first being around all these strangers but ultimately there's usually some flexibility when something bad happens and so knowing the people around you will help you sort of negotiate your way out of trouble or avoid it entirely number three is just to keep your place clean you know it's really not my business but you know college dorms are unspeakably nasty places and the reality is that if your place is a dump you don't know what's in there so you don't want to get busted for a bomb with some hippie left behind your bunk bed so that's that you know straightening up after yourself it just it protects you I know that you're in college and it's nice not to have anybody looking over your shoulder when it comes down to it if you end up in a situation with security in your room and it's a big mess that says to them that there might be something to find if they dig around a clean room sends a better message to security and it makes it easier for you to get anything out of there if you need to or just to know what's there in the first place number four is just is to watch out for random inspections or fire drills other kinds of patterns and events that happen on college campuses and this is gonna vary from one place to the next but you know at my school for example I had some buddies who were smoking pot in a dorm room one night and the fire alarm goes off boom boom so they're freaking out throwing everything putting things away and all of that and they head outside to where all the other residents are gathering and the hall director comes out and points him out brings him back inside what had happened was that he smelled it but he didn't know what room it was coming from but his hall director he had the authority to go ahead and just yank the fire alarm and so he used that and then as a result of that he had to to check each room to make sure everyone got out safely see this is the protocol there so there's all these kinds of rules on campuses that the authorities can bend and they they know what they're doing you know you're you might be new to the campus but the people that are enforcing the rules aren't and so they have a lot of tricks and techniques and so you don't want to be the person that learns that the hard way you know usually the first month the school on every campus there's a couple of people that they get jammed up and that's how everyone learns so don't be that person pay attention to what happened when other people got in trouble and you can better understand the patterns of behavior so that you can protect your own rights and those of your friends and finally and maybe the most important thing if all is just to make good decisions you know obviously you should have as much fun as you can in college but also have fun as safely as you can and I saw some people get really hurt when they were just trying to have a good time and it's a shame when that happens and in a larger sense when when bad things are happening if people are getting injured at parties and things like that there's a tendency for for schools and universities to react very negatively to those instance incidents and so rule new rules can pop up parties can get cracked down on all kinds of bad things happen if students aren't looking out for each other and so just watching each other's backs making sure that people aren't getting hurt making sure that people aren't getting into bad situations is the best way to maintain sort of free and open policies on campus and make your life more enjoyable so I hope this was helpful to you we have lots more information on our website at flexor rights org and as always all of our videos are available for free on youtube so you can check those out right here but our best videos are also available in hard copy on DVD if you'd like to order those through our website and make a small donation we really appreciate your support obviously everything is available for free but those of you who can afford to support us it really does help a lot so thank you very much and be safe

Channel: Flex Your Rights

Views: 53,779

Keywords: police, cops, bill, of, rights, 4th, Amendment, constitution, racial, profiling, marijuana, weed, pot, drug, war, arrest, busted, law, legal, cannabis, crime, officer, underage, how-to, criminal, justice, probable cause, college, school, university, dorm, frat, party, Student, Cannabis (drug), United States Of America (Country), police encounter

Id: Ln6Hu4Wpinw

Length: 9min 28sec (568 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 26 2012