Commentary: Strange Outcome in Banker’s Dozen Case

With all that has happened in the last week, I have neglected to circle back to the Banker’s Dozen case, whichsettlement I find to be truly strange.  The original case made for some fantastic headlines – the protesters starting in January 2012 managed to shut down a bank, day after day.  Some days the bank never bothered to open.

The university, fresh from the turmoil and university embarrassment over the handling of the pepper spray incident, was not keen on creating another opportunity to drag people out of the Memorial Union, handcuffed and escort them through potentially hostile student throngs.  So, after much deliberation, with the bank literally screaming to arrest the protesters, the bank finally shut their doors and ultimately sued the university.

The university at this point decided to nip this in the bud – in a more effective way than they nipped the original protests in the bud.  They turned the matter over to the DA’s office, who eventually prosecuted twelve protesters – 11 students and one professor.  They hit them with one conspiracy charge and 20 misdemeanors of interfering with a business’s right to conduct business.

But that is not what happened.  Instead, what happened was what amounted to a lot of bluster.

You had the students facing an absurd number of charges, 21, which could have conceivably put them into jail or prison for some years.

You had the bank crying foul and claiming mass harm.

You had the students arguing that this was basically retribution for embarrassing the university at the pepper spray incident.

Last year there were long debates over the propriety of the charges, whether this was an infringement of free speech, where the limits of free speech ought to be, and whether this was the best way for the university to have handled the problem.

Remarkably, however, for all of the bluster that we heard, this was another huge amount of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

For all of the wrongs that the bank claimed to have suffered, they settled their dispute with the university for a fairly modest $225,000 – what amounts to a severance or termination package for the bank.  There is speculation based on that agreement that perhaps the bank was not recognizing the windfall they had expected from the deal.

After all, there is a US Bank about six blocks from campus.  For all of the moaning about the employees displaced, we were told that there was only one who actually lost a job and that one was a part-time worker and a student.

The one thing that the bank lost was the symbol on the student ID card – the very symbol that likely made them a target in the first place.  But it is clear from this settlement that this was not a huge loss to the bank.

Then you have the prosecution of this case.  First of all, both the bank and university almost immediately came out and said that they were not seeking restitution.  To me that was always a red flag.  Because if you are the bank and believe that the students wronged you, why not seek compensation for the losses?  Part of the reason that they did not is that they did not blame the students for this – they blamed the university for failing to enforce the laws.

From the university’s perspective, they did not seem to seek to the destroy the lives of the young students.  One might argue they came out of here clear winners – they managed to stop the protests, and they managed to do so with only a slap on the wrist to the protesters.

The protesters end up winners here, as well.  Facing a huge amount of charges that seemed rather obsessive, they were offered, at first, misdemeanor deals.  However, misdemeanors would  have gone on their permanent records and might have impacted their job prospects.

As attorney Alexis Briggs told the Vanguard, “A misdemeanor is a much more serious conviction than an infraction.”

Dropping this to an infraction changes that: it allows the protesters to still do their 80 hours of community service, but without the impact on their permanent records.  All things considered, the protesters were pleased with the outcome and relieved that the ordeal was over.

Ms. Briggs told the Vanguard, “Given the nature of the political activity, community service is a very appropriate resolution.”

“If individuals were engaging in the conduct alleged, the appropriate law enforcement response would have been to identify individuals acting outside the bounds of the first amendment and issue citations on the scene for them to later appear in court,” Ms. Briggs told the Vanguard in a phone interview on Monday afternoon following the plea agreement.  “I think ultimately it was appropriate to resolve it for an infraction.”

That, of course, leads us to wonder two things.  First, why not just offer this deal initially and second, why did the university not just issue a ticket?

One of the more interesting points, after the fact, was that the protesters told me that they were surprised that the university did not simply issue them citations for disturbing the peace (which is essentially what the plea amounted to).  The protesters felt that would have put an end to the protests immediately because they could not have afforded the mounting fines.

But to me this is a strange case – it was hyped up from the start and yet, in the end, the bank settled for a very modest settlement, and the university and DA’s office allowed the students largely off the hook.  All of which begs the question for me – what was the point of all of this?

—David M. Greenwald reporting

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