Darn it, Jeff. Freshmen are here on campus and I want to write about them, write some fun service journalism, but your checkered past is taking over the blog.

When last we checked in with the new director of DPS, he had been accused of negligence in a sexual assault case that was settled out of court, and he displayed a cavalier attitude towards his department’s apparent racial profiling. Van Slyke was at the University of Texas for 6 years, though, so he got up to a lot more mischief.

UTwatch.org catalogued some of Van Slyke’s misadventures. Besides the racial profile and sexual assault, under Van Slyke’s leadership UT police:

• bought semi-automatic pistols and shotguns, despite already having pistols
• worked with the FBI to put international student information in a vast, unreliable system meant to stop terrorism
• slammed a student’s head into a wall for chalking anti-war slogans
• infiltrated student groups by attending meetings undercover. An incident report filed by a UT police officer described her attending a pro-choice group meeting.
• fought to keep the locations of security cameras secret

I’m trying to find more information and substantiate these claims from UTWatch, but main campus paper The Daily Texan is having some search problems today. Their search doesn’t turn up any articles about Van Slyke, and that can’t be right.

Flickr photo from user informatique used under a Creative Commons license

Photo by UT’s Daily Texan

Jeffrey van Slyke, the new director of our campus security force in the Department of Public Safety, has a lot of experience with campus security forces. He has a doctorate in education, a BS in criminal justice, and headed the University of Mississippi’s police force for 3 years. Before Ole Miss, though, he was tied to some unsavory situations as the head of the University of Texas Police Department, including being named in a sexual assault suit that was settled out of court.

In January 2003, while Van Slyke was the head of UTPD, a university police officer asked an African-American student for two IDs in the student union. The officer described the student’s actions as “suspicious and furtive”. The only suspicious thing the student was doing, though, was playing the piano.

The student felt that he was being racially profiled, and eventually filed a complaint. Before the complaint, however, Van Slyke had this to say:

“I cannot change how somebody feels. We are not here to be a feel-good people. People want to vent, and they feel like they have been mistreated. Truth and reality are different than how people feel.”

Sounds like someone really committed to an unbiased internal investigation. The whole incident sparked a discussion of racial issues on campus, similar to what Georgetown had after the anti-gay hate crimes. When asked at a forum about any plans to avoid racial profiling in the future, Van Slyke said there weren’t any.

It’s worth taking time out to say, what? Is this guy serious? He’s clearly a dream for campus newspapers, because he’ll shoot his mouth off whenever, but he’s not so good for people interested in a DPS that actually takes student complaints, especially racial ones, seriously.

Anyway, while an internal review conducted by UTPD found the department blameless, a task force created by the university president “suggested diversity training for campus police and a review of the department’s racial profiling policy.”

After the jump, an officer allegedly forces a blowjob, and Van Slyke is blamed

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