Gregory Foster
**** Lynnbrook Drive
Austin, Texas 78748
fostergregd@gmail.com
(469) ***-****
March 10, 2010
William Powers, Jr.
The University of Texas at Austin
PO Box T
Austin, Texas 78713
President Powers,
I am writing to you this morning to express my disappointment in being removed by university police from the baseball game between the Longhorns and Texas State Bobcats last night. I have been attending sporting events my entire life, and have never once before been forced to leave by the police. I believe this is a very bad reflection of the (apparently low) level of import placed on the First Amendment right to free speech by your university’s police department.
I am an alumnus of Texas State University-San Marcos. So are many of my close friends. We were invited to attend the game last night and to sit in a suite. We gladly accepted, with the knowledge that we would be there to root for our university’s baseball team. From the time we got settled in to out seats, we started cheering for our team, and loudly. I went downstairs to get a hamburger, and I could hear my fellow Bobcat fans in their seats, cheering “Eat ‘em up, Eat ‘em up, Go, Cats, Go!”
At one point during the baseball game, there was a very close call, which went against the Texas State team. We felt that we had a great vantage point to see that the wrong call had been made, and we were upset at it, as fans often are. One of my friends who was in attendance did, at this point, briefly use profanity, as he was caught up in the moment. Another of my friends then reminded him that it was not polite to use profanity.
At least thirty minutes later, a gentleman who identified himself as “an assistant Athletic Director” came up to our suite and asked everyone present to please come inside, which we did. The gentleman explained that there had been some kind of complaint and that we needed to tone down our cheering. We explained that we had already discussed the use of profanity and agreed that we would avoid saying anything offensive, but that we were going to continue to be vocally supportive of our team.
At this point, I was standing in the seats, rooting for my Bobcats. I was being loud. I was “heckling” in that I was yelling at the player batting, but I was not being offensive. I can give you one example. I noticed that one player on the Longhorns team was from Plano, Texas. I yelled, “The tolls (on Dallas North Tollway) are $1.25—That’s a rip-off!!!” Others in our group, in their efforts to be loud but not offensive, were saying things like, “Bobcats: Continue to hit the ball well!” I noticed that the gentleman who had spoken to us was now standing in the empty suite next to ours, monitoring our behavior. At this point, there was absolutely no profanity coming from our seats.
A few minutes later, I was quite surprised to see three university police officers in our suite, along with the same gentleman who had spoken with us before. They said, “Everyone here needs to leave right now.” We expressed our disappointment that the situation had reached this point—vocally—but we left. I was standing in the hallway waiting for everyone to leave the suite when I caught the attention of the police officer who was standing right outside the door of the suite. “Are you waiting on something?” he asked, with his hand on his holstered pistol like some gunslinger in a Clint Eastwood film. At this point, an older gentleman, an alumnus of your university if the color of his shirt is any indication, noticed what was happening. He came out of his suite, which was next to ours. “This is bullshit,” he said. He got in the cop’s face. “You can’t kick them out! I have been right here the whole time, and they didn’t do anything wrong!”
This situation is embarrassing for your university. The man who identified himself as an assistant Athletic Director was surely embarrassed that a handful of fans of the visiting team could be louder than the entire stadium full of burnt-orange-wearing UT fans. On a much more serious note, it is particularly disturbing that people who are guilty of no greater infraction than being loud fans at a sporting event would be forcibly removed from their seats by university police. It seems imperative that you find a way to educate your police officers on when they have or do not have the authority to remove people from a university event.
I am including a copy of “Cheers, Profanity, and Free Speech in College Sports”, written by Howard M. Wasserman of Florida International University’s College of Law. A quick glance at this short paper will remove any doubt that your university’s police department broke Constitutional law by removing us from the game. I take our civil liberties, and the First Amendment in particular, very seriously, and I hope that you do as well.
Very truly yours,
Gregory Foster, Alumnus, Texas State University-San Marcos
Enclosure
CC: Robert Dahlstrom, Chief of Police
DeLoss Dodds, Athletics Director
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