flasher in library
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Inappropriate Use of Library
Report by Clay Holtzman
Followed by our COMMENT
A University of New Mexico administrator says everything is being done to make sure that users of the Health Sciences Library are safe from flashers, while police and library staffers keep their eyes open for any suspects.
“We believe it’s very important for faculty, staff and students who use this building to contact us concerning inappropriate behavior in the library,” said Holly Buchanan, director of the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center
On March 13, a UNM pharmacy student filed a campus police report stating that she witnessed a man apparently masturbating on the library’s third floor.
“Yes, it has happened more than once, which has made us concerned,” Buchanan said.
She added that staff members are monitoring the library in conjunction with campus police, signs have been posted asking users to tell staff if they see anything suspicious and staff members are working to maintain the library’s open access policy while balancing it against the need for safety.
The man who allegedly exposed himself in the library on March 13 was described in the police report as Caucasian, 5 feet 9 inches tall, weighing about 145 pounds with black hair and brown eyes.
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COMMENT
Well…the Library is right!
People go there to study and do research and a library should be a place where they can do that with little or no distraction. If I was a librarian, I would not want a flasher running around distracting the students.
And I’d certainly do everything I could to find the guy. I’d then give him a warning and if he persists I’d probably ban him from the Library, or even the University.
And I think most people would agree that that would be both a justifiable and correct course of action. After all, the duty of a librarian is to provide the right conditions and materials for students to study.
But in fact the library and the university and the police will take it a lot further than that. They will put the fellow up on criminal charges and perhaps even imprison him. If he a repeat offender they will certainly imprison him.
And that is where they step over the line. There is a big jump from banning the guy from the library or the university to making him a criminal and imprisoning him. And we are stating point blank here that that course of action is not justified.
Sure…the flasher distracts the students. Sure…the flasher is offensive, at least to some. BUT DISTRACTION AND OFFENSIVENESS ARE NOT ENOUGH TO QUALIFY FOR CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR.
There are many things that are offensive to society: putting chemicals into food, or irradiating the food; putting fluoride (rat poison) into our drinking water; polluting the air with exhaust fumes…all these are offensive to large sectors of the population, yet we don’t jail the food manufacturers or the petrochemical companies.
Likewise exhibitionism may be highly offensive, but that, per se, does not qualify it as a criminal act. It is true that the courts accept it as a criminal act, but this is incorrect and is an abuse of the law by the courts. For more information, read The Exhibitionist.
We just watched a movie called, “The Bodyguard” starring Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston. In the movie there was a ruckus of some kind and the following conversation ensued:”Did you call the police?””There was no need for the police. No one got hurt.”
That, we submit, encapsulates the role of the law: to intervene when someone gets hurt, or is threatened with hurt. Anything other than that is, or should be, outside the business of criminal law.
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