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Show Solons focus on campus riots Bo Suzanne Dean In all four hiiic X By Suzanne Dean Staff Writer Final passage Monday of a resolution condemning campus riots provides a key to a prominent theme in University-related legislation pending in the Utah State Legislature. The Utah lawmakers have made it clear: they won't tolerate Berkeley-style riots on Utah campuses. In all, four bills and one resolution dealing with campus law and order have been introduced. By a vote of 24-0 with four absent, the Senate passed a house joint resolution expressing "wholehearted support to colleges and universities of Utah ... in securing to their students the individual rights and liberties so necessary to the preservation of our educational system and suppressing, where necessary, the willful destruction of property and time wasting demonstrations interfering with vital educational processes." The resolution, introduced in the House by Rep. Larry Regis, D-Spring Dale, passed the House 64-1. Monday's action indicated a shift in attitudes in the Senate. Earlier, basically because five senators were absent, the bill 1 failed to achieve the 15 votes required to move it to third reading calendar. Bill Provision Several senators then argued that campus matters should be left to college presidents and that it was not the place of the legislature to express its opinion as to how presidents should act in a campus disturbence. Monday, however, Sen. Warren Pugh's (R-Salt Lake) motion to reconsider the resolution was approved and the resolution passed. Neither did Senate Bill 112, passed last week by the Senate and now in the House Judiciary Committee, prompt real debate. Amendment In its original form the bill made it a misdemeanor to "commit and act likely to interfere with peaceful conduct of the activities of the campus ..." An amendment made changed the bill, and in its new form, a person must actually be disturbing the peace to be guilty. Another provision of the bill enabled the University to press a trespass complaint against any person who "enters upon the campus of a state institution of higher education, violates any rule of said institution," and upon being informed of the rule persists in disobeying it. The bill also orders city police and state officers to respond, when asked by the University, to any condition of unrest existing or developing on a campus ..." and to do so without charge to the University. Expulsion SB 112, however, is perhaps not as direct as a bill (House Bill 220) recently introduced which would make any student found guilty of "riotous or other unlawful and disorderly conduct in or about any public building," of damaging or removing property belonging to any college, or of making "any threat of force or violence toward college or university personnel" subject to automatic expulsion. Under the bill, any court finding a student guilty of the misbehavior described would be obliged to expell him. A similar bill, HB 207, would force University administrations to discharge for at least two years faculty or staff members "guilty of riotous or other unlawful and disorderly conduct," or "destroying or mutilating any property of the State of Utah." The act applies, in addition, to other employees in all departments of state government. Both bills are sponsored by Rep. Franklin Gunnell, R-Logan. "The goal of both bills is to protect property of the state and the rights of those who don't riot, mutilate and destroy," Rep. Gunnell said. No Responsibility "The point is that students are using state facilities, and in this bill (HB 220) expresses the opinion that the state does not have any responsibility to provide facilities for them to tear up," he said. So far, the anti-riot bills have generated little controversy. The same can't be said for Senate Bill 10 which would create a single governance board for all state colleges. The bill squeaked past second reading by one vote and received substantial support only after 42 amendments were added, including one which would allow "Citizens Advisory Boards" to assume certain regulatory powers delegated by the single board. The bill is expected to pass the house substantially in tact. |