After arrival at 29 Garden St. for booking, Strahan complained about wrist pain from the handcuffs so HUPD took him to the hospital; there he received x-rays and a clean bill of health. According to the HUPD report, Strahan afterward asked an officer if he was wearing a vest, then asked, “What was the history of Harvard police officers getting shot at?”
The University contends in the report that the arrest was reasonable given the existing trespass warning. The University also cites past court decisions to argue that despite the presence of a government depository, it can ban people from its property and facilities. And even if Harvard was a place of public accommodation, the University says, it “had good cause to exclude the plaintiff.”
OPEN ACCESS?
Strahan disputes the University’s argument, saying the trespass warning was never authorized by President Lawrence H. Summers or the Board of Overseers. Citing his previous use of the library, Strahan calls the trespass statute a “very primitive legal instrument” and says the University’s contract with the government to provide a depository nullifies any such right to keep out the public.
Strahan says case law concerning university-run depositories is on his side. “You can’t stop [public access], period, without a court order.”
Asked whether he disagrees with the arrest report’s contention that he was sleeping in the library, Strahan calls the point immaterial, since “students sleep at the library all the time.”
Strahan’s argument hinges upon the fact that the HLS Library contains a federal depository, which is open to the public. The website for HLS Library says that it is “obligated by law to provide free access” to its collection of U.S. government documents.
He was not, however, registered to use the depository while he used a computer terminal in the reading room.
But Strahan says he feels he ought to have access to the entire library in which the federal depository is housed and that librarians have traditionally let anyone into the reading room.
Like other libraries, the HLS depository has a separate sign-in procedure for the public.
Beth Brainard, spokeswoman for the Harvard College Library, which runs Lamont Library—site of the other government depository on campus—says that members of the public can show a photo ID and sign in at the door; the visitors generally consist of academics from other institutions. While Brainard stresses that for privacy reasons the library does not keep a count of who uses the library, she observes that in general, a small percentage of the library’s users, approximately 10 percent, come from outside Harvard.
But once someone signs into Lamont Library, although they technically are given access only to the government documents, the building layout means that it’s difficult for Harvard to restrict their access to the rest of the facility. “It’s pretty much on the honor system,” Brainard said.
PRO SE AND PROUD
Strahan stresses that his central dispute is with employees involved in the trespass warning and arrest, rather than Harvard.
A hearing for the University’s motion for a summary judgment is now slated for January 6, 2005. Strahan, who is representing himself, signs his legal documents “Pro Se and Proud!” He says he feels Middlesex county court is too connected to Harvard, so he may move the case to a western Massachusetts or federal court, if necessary.
Strahan says the legal research he does at the libraries is in the public interest. “I’m the only person who brings endangered species protection lawsuits,” Strahan says, calling the access issue a challenge to the “total freedoms and deals that go to the heart of our society.
“They can’t throw this case out for nothing,” he says. “I’m not going to be shut down.”