Note from the editor-in-chief:
This article had been previously taken down at the request of the interviewee–there was disagreement surrounding the representation of events. Instead of publishing a shortened version of the interview, we have decided to publish the original interview in its entirety, edited only for readability and clarity.
Sincerely,
The Quindecim
—
So Jimy told me about what happened with you, I was hoping that with this interview I could sort of start off with you just giving your general account, and then we can move on to follow-up questions. Do you have any reservations going into this? Or anything that you need me to know? Not necessarily on the record.
No, not really.
In that case, go, unless you want me to start giving you questions.
Yeah. So, I guess I can give you sort of the- well, one question I have is “How much do you know, like just right off the bat?”
I actually have a bunch of notes here. I know that you were a student and that you graduated; and that afterwards you were banned from being on campus. I know that you, I believe, were banned, but the reason cited was for entering the dining hall through the wrong door? It was mentioned that you had been followed by campus security, and am I getting anything wrong here?
No, not really, but I was not followed by campus security, but I can get into that.
I mean, I have a gist of it, but I’d rather go into this with the expectation of, because in a way you’re speaking to me, I can’t just say what happened; it needs to be in your own words, if that makes sense.
I started at Goucher in 2017 and so I walked in May of 2023 and I officially had a couple of credits left that I was taking. So officially fall of 2023 was my last semester. And the reason it took so long is because I’m originally from Iran–an international student. There were multiple interruptions with the Muslim ban, and like for COVID. I was just in Iran for two and a half years, unable to even take online classes, because the application Zoom is blocked in Iran. So anyways, Fall 2023, I came back and I had two credits left to take, and I initially had a housing arrangement off campus.
I was basically like a commuter. And then that arrangement did not work out. And I was staying with this person, this older lady who lives near Goucher and whom I knew through a network of people–these details don’t really matter. Anyways, her house got bed bugs basically, and I couldn’t stay there. So I came back and I spoke with Lindy Bobbit, who at the time was the director of Res Life, and who has since resigned. She was like, “Okay, we can figure out a housing arrangement for you on campus.” And so that’s what she did. She gave me a room in Welsh and so I started living there.
This was in 2023?
Yeah, this was in the fall semester of 2023. And so I started living on campus, going to my classes and I was also involved in some activism for Palestine on campus. And then out of nowhere one night, I locked myself out of my room. It was a weekend night and it was later, so the protocol is to call either Res Life or Campus Safety if Res Life is closed.
So I called campus safety and they sent an officer uh his name is Officer [Officer 1], And I think we can keep his name out of the records, just because according to my understanding, he was just following what his supervisor was telling him, right? He is also like, an immigrant, it’s very obvious English is not his first language. So he comes to let me into my room and he does. I go in and I show him my OneCard as I’m supposed to, and he leaves. I close the door, he leaves. Two seconds later, he comes knocking on my door and he says, “You’re not allowed to be here. My supervisor told me that your name is not showing up” or something and, you know, he was struggling to fully make it clear what was going on, again because English is not his first language.
So we both came to the agreement that it would be best that I go to Campus Safety and talk to his supervisor. So I grab my keys that I had left in the room last time and I go with him taking up his safety and there’s someone like his supervisor is this new campus safety officer called Officer [Officer 2]. She’s a white woman and a lot of people have talked to me about her before. Like her reputation precedes her.
She’s new, people talk about how she’s irrationally strict and making things more difficult. I go in and I recognize her and she says “Yeah, I can’t let you into the room because your name is not showing up on our records.”
And I’m like, “Well, there’s a mistake. I’ve been living here for the past few months, or weeks.”
It doesn’t matter to her. It doesn’t matter what I say. She’s just like, “I can’t let you in.”
And I’m like “Well, if this was in my room, how would I have a key to it?”
And she’s like “I don’t know, someone could have given you the key.”
I’m like, “Well, I have access to Welsh.”
And she says, “I don’t know, you might have a class there.” And that’s not how this works, and she’s new so she doesn’t know that. The one classroom in Welsh doesn’t need OneCard access. So it just doesn’t matter what I’m saying, she just doesn’t care and she’s like “I can’t let you in.”
And I at some point I sort of say, “Well, you don’t need to let me in, I can just let myself in and I have the key now. And, also you kind of already let me in.” So she was like, “Oops.” But then I was like “lady, it’s okay. I live here.” I keep explaining to her, but she doesn’t care. so I’m like, “Okay, so what do you want me to do?”
She’s like, “We have to hear from someone from Res Life. So you have to contact them and have them tell us that you live here.”
And I’m like, “Well, is this happening?” I don’t know when exactly but it’s later on a weekend night.
After hours?
I don’t know if it’s after hours, it might be 10, 11? I don’t know. It might be later. I just know that Res Life wasn’t open, it wasn’t during their working hours. So anyways, then I’m like “well it’s a weekend night, I don’t have anyone’s number, I would have to email them and I don’t know when they’re going to get back to me. What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”
She’s like, “Well, you could just wait here in the office.”
And I’m like, “No, I’m just going to go and let myself in my room and you can’t physically restrain me from leaving. And I’ll contact Res Life and they’ll get back to you at their earliest convenience.”
And so she’s like, “Okay.”
And it’s like a very civil conversation. We come to an agreement, I leave. I do end up emailing Res Life, and they do end up resolving that situation. I don’t know the timeline of this, though, because something else happened that semester and I don’t know if it happened before or after it got resolved with Res Life, right? So, this other thing that happened that semester was that my friend and I were off campus, my friend is also a Goucher student and at the time was an RA. And we were coming back to campus again. It was a late weekend night and I was driving in my car, we come to the gate and we buzz, I buzz my OneCard. It doesn’t work. So I use hers and it still doesn’t work. So I’m like “There has to be a problem with the system.”
So the officer who’s there at the gate comes out and asks for a name. And so I give my name and I’m like, “Parsa Sheikholeslami.” He writes it down, goes in, [and] calls somebody, I’m assuming the main office. Comes back out, says “You’re not allowed to be on campus.” So to me this is an escalation from “we can’t let you into this room because it doesn’t say that you live here” versus “You’re not allowed on campus,” as if I’m on some kind of a list and am some kind of criminal, right? And so I’m very confused. It’s pouring rain, I mean, thankfully we’re in the car. I don’t know what to do.
And Lindy Bobitt had just resigned. I think this was a Saturday or Sunday night, the Friday right before was her last day of being the director of Res Life. And I have Lindy’s number, so I called her and I’m assuming nothing has prompted this. Even through my activism for Palestine, I haven’t had any interactions with campus safety. I haven’t received warnings of any kind with regard to my activism for Palestine or anything else, no disciplinary action, nothing that comes close to it. So to me, the only explanation is that interaction with Officer [Officer 1]. So I call Lindy Bobbitt and I’m like “Lindy, this is happening. They’re telling me I’m not allowed on campus. I think this has to do with the night of lock-out.”
I think my name is not showing up in the system because I changed my status from a commuter to boarding halfway through the semester. So she is like, “Okay, let me call them.”
So, she calls campus safety. Meanwhile, my friend and I are just out there and it takes a while, and then Lindy calls me back and she’s like “Parsa, they are not even accepting what I’m saying. I told them that you’re a student there and that you live there, and they’re saying that they need special permission for you.”
So she was like “I don’t know what this means, and I feel like I might not actually be able to help you.”
This is the director of Res Life, you know, like this is insane. So as Lindy and I are speaking at this point, my friend and I have been out there for like close to 45 minutes, if not an hour. So then Lindy is considering calling Aarika Camp. She’s just brainstorming with me on the phone to see what she has to do and she doesn’t know. And as Lindy and I are talking, the officer who’s there at the gate signals to me to come in, and he takes my name and my friend’s name on a piece of paper and lets us in. I’m assuming that that was an individual decision on behalf of that officer, he was just like, oh, these poor kids, like come on, go in, you know? Because it didn’t seem like [he] got a call.
It was just like come on, I’ let you in. So, we went in and I called Lindy. I was like “Hey, it just got resolved, I don’t know [how], but we’re in.”
So she’s like “Okay, I’m glad.”
And, like I said, eventually I resolved the issue fully with Res Life and you my name not showing up in the system got taken care of. So this is everything that happens while I’m a student in Goucher College and before I enter any dining call through a back door, this is like fully happening out of nowhere.
Again, not even related to my activism.
I’m assuming if it’s after the activism, is this in late November?
Yes, Again, I don’t know the exact timeline. So I finish my degree and then I leave campus. I’m living in Baltimore during winter break, and after winter break is over, spring semester is my first semester officially as an alum. And so within the first two to three weeks, multiple things happened that were an extension of everything that had happened last semester with regards to campus safety, but also elevated and definitely alarming.
One was when I was on campus one weekend, it was a Sunday because of a close friend of mine who was at the time a student at Goucher. She was the president of G.I.S.A., Goucher International Student Association, and there was a program happening that weekend for G.I.S.A. in the Atheneum, in the Batza room. It was a soccer thing, and so I went there to support my friend in her program but also to see a bunch of these international students that I’m friends with who were going to be there. So Batza room is a public room where you’re allowed to go there as an alum, but even as someone who’s not associated with the college.
So I go and my friend has to grab a bunch of snacks for this event that Karen Sykes, the international student advisor, has left in her office in Van Meter [Hall]. So I walked with my friend to go there and grab the snacks, and when we make it to Van Meter, we have to call Campus Safety because the building is locked because it’s the weekend. So they dispatch an officer to open the door and the officer is Officer [Officer 1], but it is the same guy from the night of the lockout. And when he comes, my friend and I are standing in the vestibule area and officer [Officer 1] comes in, he looks me up and down and he says, “You’re not allowed to be here.”
And I’m like, “What do you mean?”
Before I’m even able to ask a question, I see him say into his walkie-talkie, “Parsa is here.”
Okay. So he knows my name. He knows me by face and again, all very alarming. And he’s like, “You’re the guy from Welsh.”
I’m like, “Yes.”
He’s like, okay, “Where are you living now?”
I’m like, “Well, I graduated, I’m an alum, I’m living on campus.”
He’s like, “Okay, I can’t let you into the building.”
That’s what it sounds like to me. So at that point, what I’m interpreting is, because I’m an alumni [sic], I’m no longer a student, he can’t let me into the building. So I’m like, “okay”, and I immediately step outside very respectfully and I wait, and he escorts my friend up to Karen’s office and they come back. When they come back down, and they’re coming out, I see, first of all my friend’s face is horrified, and then he comes out and very assertively he says, “You have to leave the premises immediately, or else we’re going to call the police.”
I’m like, “I think there has been a misunderstanding, if you wouldn’t mind, we can walk to the Campus Safety office together and I need to talk to someone, I want to see if there has been a misunderstanding and if he still wants to call the police at that time you can. So I’m trying to remain calm and collected. My friend is telling me “Parsa, just leave.”
I’m like, no, like this is I didn’t do anything wrong. And so we go to campus safety and Officer [Officer 2] is on call. Again. It’s like the two of them are like a pair or something. Like they’re always up on call together. So I go in, and I’m very assertive because to me whatever level of ineptitude led to all of the headache and misunderstandings from last semester has now reached new levels, because to threaten, to involve the police out of absolutely nowhere is not okay, so at this point I’m upset and I’m remaining respectful, but I’m very assertive. So I walk in there and I’m like, “I was just told that I can’t be here.”
And as soon as Officer [Officer 2] sort of sees how assertive I am, she kind of goes back into her shell a little bit. So she’s kind of losing her words. She’s eating, she’s like, “You know you’re just not allowed to be in the academic building.”
And I’m like, “I understand that. And as soon as [Officer 1] told me that I left, I stepped out, but he then came back and threatened to call the police. And the police have been threatened to be involved, I need to know what’s going on.”
And she just was making no sense. She was like, “I don’t know anything about that. I’m going to speak with my supervisor and we’ll get back to you within 24 to 48 hours,” [or] something like that.
And I was just like “Lady, you guys just threaten to call the cops on me. I need to have some answers.” Basically, she just asked me a bunch of questions. “Are you an alum?”
“Yes.”
“Well, okay, alumni are allowed to be on campus as long as you’re in public spaces.”
I was like, “I am allowed to be in the library then.”
She’s like, “Yes.”
“Am I allowed to be on campus right now?”
She’s like “Yes.” So then that’s how it ends. So, we talk a little bit and we come to the conclusion that I’m allowed to be on campus.
Did you get any hint of a reason why?
No. So then I left, and I went to my friend’s event, in the Batza room. So that’s one thing that happened within the first few weeks of spring semester. The second thing that happened is that another friend of mine who, again, is a current student at the time and an RA, got contacted by her supervisor with an email that said, hey, see something concerning has been going on on your floor, and so we need to have a chat.
And you know, “let’s meet tomorrow morning” or something. And so my and also this is when Res Life is going through a transition, right? Because the previous director resigned, there’s a new director, everything is changing, and word on the street is that this new director is more strict. So everybody’s kind of watching their back, you know. And so when my friend gets this email, she’s very scared because she knows she hasn’t done anything wrong you know, but that has not been enough in the past to absolve people. Some people have gotten fired, for example. So she’s very stressed when she gets that, you know, the whole day she’s so stressed that she leaves campus and spends the day with another friend off campus. And then the next morning, when it’s time for a meeting, she goes and her supervisor Corey says, “is Parsa living with you?’
That was the point of the meeting, and she was just like, “What? That’s like that’s what you called me in here for? No, he’s not living with me.”
And he says these are also things that my friend [Resident Assistant] quoted and she’s willing to also testify–these are things that came out of Corey’s mouth. First he threatened, he was like, “If you’re lying, you can lose your job over this. You have to tell the truth.”
And she kept saying “No, I’m telling you the truth.” He kept insisting, he was like “A lot of people have been coming to me from the administration and all of their stories are lining up that Parsa is living here. and you have to be careful because a lot of people have their eyes on you,” so she was just so confused.
She was like, “Well, Parsa is an alum first of all, he’s a friend of ours. This is his first semester as an alum. He’s an international student, so he visits us, but he always sticks to the visiting rule. And he has a car. He sometimes drives us places, so we hang out, but he’s not living here.”
So then he was like, “Okay, whatever.” So after these two incidents and particularly, the meeting with Corey happened first, and then the police thing happened.
So the meeting you just described happened before the incident where you weren’t allowed on campus?
Yeah. I remember when the police incident happened, where they threatened to involve the police, that’s when I was like “I’ve had enough.” I sent an email to a bunch of people. I included a bunch of people in that email because it’s like, at this point it’s like campus safety, but also Res Life. It’s different offices overlapping, and there seems to be either a big misunderstanding or this is intentional. They can’t prove if it’s my activism, for example, that it was me. So they’re trying to sort of scare me out of being on campus or I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on. You know, these are just assumptions.
I want to include people from all these different offices because if it is a misunderstanding, it has to get resolved in the same room. So I forward the email to Erik Thompson, Tiffany Justice, Jasmine Lee, Juan from CREI at the time, John from Res Life, I forget his last name, the new director of Res Life. And who else? I think that’s it. And I think Aarika Camp. I say “Hey, some very concerning things have been going on. I need to meet with you all if it’s a misunderstanding to clear it once and for all.”
So then it takes a few weeks. Jasmine kind of takes the lead in terms of gathering people. And it takes a few weeks, but eventually, I meet with a group of people that consists of Jasmine Lee, Erik Thompson, Tiffany Justice, and Michelle Ewing from alumni affairs. And so, we have that meeting and that meeting is held at my request so that I can explain to them my experiences and bring to their attention because it’s alarming and it’s a failure quite frankly of so many different sectors of this college, particularly campus safety. So we have the meeting and I explain everything I just told you very clearly, I tell them what’s been going on, and there’s a mixture of sentiments.
On the one hand, everybody is sorry and they’re, expressing that they’re going to try to hold people accountable and they’re that they’re going to, you know, put accountability measures in place. But then there’s also this other sentiment where, for example, at some point Michelle starts sort of lecturing me and she’s like, “You know, Parsa, navigating this transition from being a student to an alumni can be a difficult thing.”
And when she’s saying that, part of me is just like, “This is not about me, not knowing how to navigate this transition. I’m not doing anything different than other alumni. I’m just visiting campus every once in a while, you know, and seeing my friends. This is like an alarming failure of this institution for involving the police without any basis whatsoever and being so irresponsible with that. Towards an international student, which is also an important piece and so there was just like moments where I felt like the point was being missed, and the same thing with Jasmine, at some point she was like, just for my sake, she sort of posed the question to the group and particularly I think to Tiffany and Erik, “Where are alumni allowed to be, and where are they not allowed to be?”
Michelle actually initially started to answer, but she failed because she didn’t really know the rules and then Tiffany started to say, “They can be in public spaces like the library or the dining hall, but they can’t be going to dorms, they have to be accompanied by a student.” And so that happens, right? And then at another point during the meeting, I raised the point, I said to Tiffany, I was like, does any of this have to do with my activism for Palestine? Is this directly somehow tied to that?”
And then Tiffany said, “Parsa, as you know, you have been involved in some activism, so a lot of people around here know you” And then I also explained to them this and other experiences that I had again during the spring semester. This is sort of separate from everything else that’s happened to me, but I included it because it reflected similarly, a failure on behalf of the institution.
And so that experience is that I was on campus with the current student and we were headed to the student market to get some stacks and go somewhere. And in the area in front of the student market where there’s a bunch of chairs and tables, was an event being held by Speak Out Now. It was an off campus entity and it was like a poster making for a Palestine event. They have these kinds of things. They come on campus and sometimes they hand out pamphlets or something about socialism or about climate change, stuff like very harmful- harmless things.
Be careful!
Yeah, very harmless, yeah. I guess harmful in the institution’s eye, but, so I happen to know the person who was the organizer from off campus events. So as we’re going to the studio, I guess as we’re coming back from the student market, I just stand in front of her and we have like a five minute conversation, small talk. And my current student is standing next to me as this happens. We have a five minute chat, leave, that’s it. [We] don’t participate in the event, nothing, and then my friend gets an email from Erica Gardner a few days later that says “You have been spotted at this event that’s been organized by an off campus entity, you should know that they don’t have permits to have events on campus. While you’re not in trouble as a student, we just wanted to let you know that these are the ways one can go about getting a permit if they want to have an event.”
And so yes, they’re not in trouble, but that obviously is a threat, that’s what that email is doing. And so I brought up this story because I was saying that it feels very ‘Big Brother’ on campus. Who is watching?
We were just there for five minutes. How would they know we were there? How do they know the names of all the students, and then to go the extra mile of actually reaching out and actually threatening these students?
So when I bring up this story, Tiffany Justice says “Parsa if you feel like you’re being watched on campus, it’s because you are.”
This in the meeting with all the other folks from Admin?
Yeah, yeah. And both her and Jasmine were talking about this as if it’s a positive thing. They were like, “Yes, you are being watched. However, it’s for your own sake. It’s because, after COVID and with all of the stuff that’s going on nationally, with colleges and protests and whatever, we just want to make sure that we know what you guys are doing so that we can protect you.”
That’s the narrative they’re going with. So, I was just very confused by that meeting, because they were all sorry and they all said that accountability measures would be put in place. But also they were asking questions and making comments that made it seem like they don’t really get it. That they put at least some of this on me. Anyway, then that meeting ends and then Jasmine sends me an email after that meeting as like a recap, right? And I have that receipt. Actually, let me quickly pull it up.
So Jasmine sends an email, you can read the whole thing when I send it to you, but I’ll just read you the important part. It’s basically like “As we discussed while visiting guests are not allowed in locked buildings, prohibited spaces or residential halls without being accompanied. You absolutely have the right to visit campus, connect with friends, participate in programs, attend events, and the like.”
So this is important, the rest of the email’s like, we’re gonna do this, about them taking accountability. So a week after this meeting, I get an email from Tiffany Justice that says “You’re barred.”
It’s like this whole disclaimer that says “If you’re on campus, we have the right to call the cops, blah, blah, blah.” It’s very official, scary. And I emailed her and I’m like, “Why did I get barred?”
And she says “Because you violated a school policy”, and she just wouldn’t . So I’m like “What was right, like what school policy did I violate?” And she’s like “You entered the dining hall through a back door that says do not enter.”
Oh, so you like this isn’t a specific incident?
This was just the reason given.
Do you remember, can you go back in your mind palace or whatever, and think of the one time you did that or it’s just like, that’s the thing every kid does here?
I mean, everybody does that, being honest with yourself, yeah. Everybody does that, and I’ve done that multiple times, have never received a single warning, verbal, written, anything like that.
Did they say any other reasons?
No, this is the only reason. And so, I met Jasmine. I sent her an email and said, “Jasmine, I need to meet with you.” Jasmine was just going away for something. So she quickly filled me in and I was like, “Have you been updated?”
And she’s like, “No, I don’t know what’s going on.”
And I said, “I just got barred.”
And so Jasmine is shocked and she literally is like, what? You know, she’s just in the Zoom meeting, and I can see her facial expressions. And multiple things also to note is that this email was sent to me on the first day of Ramadan. The email from Tiffany, the barring notice.
Were there campus celebrations for that that you were expected to attend?
No, but as a Muslim student, it’s just like it’s like receiving that email on Christmas. So anyway, then I was talking to Jasmine and I explained to her all of this. I was like “So they’re sending me an email that bars me from campus because I entered a dining hall, on the first day of Ramadan”, and Jasmine was so taken aback by all of this information that she-and I’m quoting, she said, “Parsa, this is icky.”
She just seemed very frustrated and sad for me. And then she said, “I suggest you reach out to Tiffany and talk to her to see if there’s a way you can get unbarred, or something.”I requested to meet with Tiffany, I did, I again explained to her the whole situation, and I also said “Everybody enters the dining hall through the back door. So to me, this is unequal enforcement of a policy and that’s discrimination that’s discriminatory.”
To which Tiffany said, “No, if you and I are both speeding on the highway and I get pulled over and you don’t, that’s not discrimination. I was the one who just happened to get caught.”
I’m assuming Tiffany is White?
She’s not. She’s a black woman. That’s what’s insane to me; that and the fact that she used this specific example. I’m like, “Are you trying to sound like you’ve been sitting under a rock?” So, Tiffany has a very rules are rules attitude about it. And so I’m like, “So what can I do to get it unbarred?”
She said, “You have to write a letter to me.”
So I say, okay, and I’m like, “How long does it take for this to be processed, and for me to hear back from you?”
And she said “Usually, around two weeks.”
And I’m like, “Okay, there are multiple events coming up,” At that point the Eid celebration was coming up and the International Festival, or something. So I was like, “Is there any way you can expedite this process so that if I am going to get unbarred, I can actually make it to as many of these events where my friends are going to be, these are important events for me as well.”
She was like, “I’ll see. Try to send a letter as soon as possible, and I’ll see what I can do.”
So I send her the letter the next day and I just never hear back from her and she just never responded until the end of the semester, and at the end of the semester there was just one email that said “We’re still
processing your request, like you’ll hear back from us soon, blah, blah, blah.”
Was that at the beginning of this summer?
Yeah. So anyway, so then basically from the time I got barred, I tried multiple times to talk to people. I called Kent’s office twice and at some point her(sic.) secretary took my information and she [said] “We’re going to get back to you.”
I was like, “I want to meet with him online.” And they’re like, “Okay, we’ll set it up.” And I never heard back. I tried contacting Erik Thompson, he didn’t respond either.
Erik Thompson in the meeting that you mentioned earlier with all the folks?
Yeah. And it’s interesting because, in the fall of 2023, Jasmine was new, right? It was I think her first time fully working. And she understood very quickly that there was a lack of trust between the student body and the administration. The students didn’t trust anybody and she was coming in and she was trying to do good, and nobody trusted her merely because she was part of the administration. There was a time when I was sort of in this circle of most the administrators and and faculty, and she was expressing this. And I spoke to it and I said “Yes, you’re right. That’s that’s a correct observation. But, the way to go about this is to earn people’s trusts, because there’s a good reason that it’s not there.”
And so during that semester, obviously the administration messed up every time with regards to Palestine. It just didn’t matter what the context was, whether it was a community hearing or [Pause], it didn’t matter. It was just like every time the emails that Kent sent, every time they responded to a protester, an art installation, everything was just amiss. Right. And so as someone who was like part of that group of students who was speaking to this issue, I kept engaging with the administration. I showed up every time Jasmine had something set up. I showed up, and Erik happened to be there as well, and I engaged with him, too. I mean, these are people that are hated by people like me, to the point where they don’t even want to talk to them. They don’t they don’t respect them enough to actually engage with them.
You’re saying this is a trend you saw among other protesters?
I don’t speak for everybody, but I do think there’s a lack of trust. Yeah, absolutely. There’s a lack of trust. And I think that me continuing to show up and continuing to engage with them was something that stood out for them so much so that they both commented on it, like Jasmine multiple times said “Parsa, thank you for continuing to show up.”
Erik, multiple times, “Thank you so much, I really enjoy the fact that you are willing to engage.” or something like that. And then when I got barred, it was like Erik didn’t respond to me at all. So then for the Eid celebration, my friends got me un-barred for one day, just so I could attend. They didn’t tell me this. They surprised me because my grandfather also happened to pass away right before the celebration, I was really going through it. And so they basically went to anyone they could think of, like the whole day. They went to Karen Sykes. They went to Maeba Jonas, to Aarika, to the [Encampment], Justin Smith, Tiffany Justice, Erik Thompson. They went at everybody and everybody said “No.”
They went to Jasmine and then finally they saw Kent walking around somewhere on Van Meter, and they ran after him and cornered him and basically begged him to unbar me for the day. Then he sort of reluctantly did so. And then when they asked him they were like “So how is Parsa dangerous? To the safety of this campus?”
He said “He is stealing food from current students.”
Because I entered the dining hall through the back door and didn’t pay. Then Kent said to my friends and he has said to multiple other people in multiple other instances that I’ll get to, “He was warned multiple times.” even though I wasn’t warned even once.
Kent said that you were warned?
Yeah. And so then basically after trying multiple times to contact these people and not hearing back, I sent another long email to Jasmine that I will send to you. And I titled it An Invitation to Dialogue because that’s what Jasmine always talks about is dialogue, right? And I wrote a lengthy email and I described, I said “Listen, if I enter the dining hall through the back door, it’s because I’m food insecure, I just graduated. I’m an international student and there’s so much food waste at that dining hall. I have friends who work at the food recovery network and even they’re even overwhelmed by how much food waste there is. So the fact that you’re claiming that I’m stealing food from current students, I just don’t understand it, like it’s beyond comprehensible.” And also the fact that like Kent has said “Parsa has been warned multiple times,” even though I haven’t been.
Anyways, let me actually also find [this] because I think this is an important piece of this. Yes, and this is at a time when also Israel bombed a city in Iran. That’s a city that’s close to where my family lives. I included that in my email as well.
And I was basically like, “I’m an international student. Since I’m tied on money and unemployed, I don’t have anywhere to go during the day I spend most of my time alone in my apartment listening to the news. Did you hear Israel carried out a strike in Iran a few days ago in Isfahan about eight hours from my city? We often went there on road trips good food, mesmerizing architecture, thankfully the strike didn’t hit the city itself, only the outskirts where the military bases are. My family recently moved to the outskirts of Shirazs. Today I thought about how an air strike would destroy everything. My father is a photographer and our house is filled with family albums and it’s terrifying to imagine that I wouldn’t even have a photo left behind if something happened.”
So I was trying to make that very like real in terms of what it’s like to be barred from campus and to be cut off from my only community and fully isolated while I’m going through this and so Jasmine sent an email. First of all, she did a 180.
In this email, she suddenly was like, well, Parsa, during that meeting that we all had together with Jasmine and Erik and Michelle, you promised you would [pause]. Let me read her exactly. Let me quote her. “You agreed to abide by all college policies when visiting campus and explicitly named that you understood the consequences of any following actions.” She was like “You agreed and you didn’t follow through, so this is fair.”
So, she’s doing a 180 and she’s also mischaracterizing what happened during our meeting. She’s making it sound like that meeting was my first warning. It wasn’t. That meeting was held at my request and the only thing that was said, even though it was kind of inappropriate in the context of what I was describing, was, “where are you allowed to go?” And [the dining hall] I’m allowed to go there. It’s a public space, and so the fact that she’s mischaracterizing to say you agreed to abide by all college policies is again incomprehensible, I don’t understand why she’s doing it.
She’s changed her stance. And then at the end of that sort of email, that long email when she basically completely sides with the administration, she says “In the meantime, as an alum, transitioning into life outside of campus can often be challenging. I love Baltimore, and if there are ways I can help people to build a stronger community and make necessary connections in the broader Baltimore metro area. Please let me know. I’d be happy to help.”
I’m like, “I’m describing to you the isolation that I’m experiencing and not only are you siding with the administration and lying basically about what happened, but you’re also-I don’t know.” It was just very weird. So I’ll send you all these receipts. And so, that was sort of my last attempt to go through the system. And so I just stopped talking to anyone from the administration at that point. The students who were at the encampment included my unbarring as part of their requests from the administration.
And we were approaching the end of the semester, and more and more events were happening that had to do with my community with my friends, like their graduation ceremonies and Baccalaureate, their art shows, all this stuff, and to me it would be absolutely useless if the if they unbarred me after everything had happened, because they will not be held accountable, because anytime you want to hold them accountable, they’ll say, “Well, we unbarred him”, but all the harm will be done anyways. And so the students at the encampment brought this up to Kent Devereaux, and one time they were in a meeting behind closed doors with Kent and Jasmine and they were talking about me and Kent said, again, “Parsa was warned multiple times”, and Jasmine had to correct him and say “No, he actually wasn’t warned” and and all of this again points to deep failure. Kent Devereaux is making what, like 300, 400 thousand dollars a year, doesn’t have to pay rent, and he is accusing me of stealing food, and then he’s making $400,000 a year and he’s not even fact checking?
He’s going around saying he’s been warned multiple times to justify the amount of harm that’s been done to me and he hasn’t even done basic fact [checking]. He’s not even doing his job. He’s getting paid so much and then simultaneously accusing me of stealing food, which is, again, absurd to me. It’s shameless, it’s beyond absurd. And he just kept going back and forth on his word. He kept promising the encampment students to reach out to me multiple times and he didn’t. Then finally his secretary reached out to me and said, “Kent wants to meet with you.”
And I said “At this point I would only meet with him if it’s open-door, like if other people are allowed to join. Because there needs to be some transparency.” And then she said “No.”
That’s also around the same time that I heard back from Tiffany, who said “We’ll be in touch with you soon”, because I think everybody was sort of talking to each other and the goal of it was for Kent to then come and talk to me. So then, and that’s what the second email from the secretary was. But the encampment students had not only said that I got unbarred, but they also wanted a public apology. Not just for me, but for the way all, you know, BIPOC students, minority students are being treated on campus. And we never received anything like that from the administration. Yeah,basically for the last like two days I sent many notes to Tiffany Justice and I said, “Hey listen, [the] last two days I was in-”
Like two days ago?
No, back at the last two of Baccalaureate and graduation. I sent an email to Tiffany and I said, “Can I just get a two-day exemption again so that I can attend these ceremonies and then you won’t hear from me?”
And so she granted me those and I was able to attend those ceremonies, but it was very strict. It was starting at 9am on this day and ending at 3 pm, so right after the ceremony was over, I was barred again. I would have to have that meeting with Kent. Again behind closed doors where he won’t be taking any accountability I’m assuming. Because he hasn’t, even during his negotiations with the encampment students, there were multiple times when he promised something and broke that promise and there was absolutely no accountability–Broke the promise in terms of the timeline of when he would reach out to me of what he would say, it was all just a mess, and he at some point actually used my unbarring to leverage against the encampment student’s requests, so it’s like a bunch of other requests from the students were pending, so they really haven’t heard from them, and like the administration had offered to meet them halfway, even though they hadn’t basically even taken a step forward.
And they were like, “We’re not going to unbar Parsa until you guys also agree to all of these other things that we’ve offered,” using my unbarring as a leveraging thing when at that point, like it shouldn’t have even happened in the first place.
I did have one question that I want to ask you. You probably don’t get Goucher’s emails anymore, but they recently, and I will pull it up, they recently changed their protest policy, their demonstration policy so that students could only get barred if they exposed a threat to campus, and they removed a clause about it being due to violations of policy. I wanted to know if you were aware of that, and if you had any comment on it.
I was not, but the truth of the matter is the problem with Goucher is, yes, part of the problem is the policies themselves need to be refined. The other problem is that this place is so chaotic that nobody actually follows protocol. I mean, the fact that like when I got barred, Tiffany said, you know, if you and I both speed and I just get pulled over, blah blah, implying that no warning is even needed. I just got caught so I’m getting barred now. Jasmine implying that our meeting was the warning implies oh, you received one warning, right? And then Kent said you received multiple warnings so based on all of this, it’s like how many warnings then is it protocol to receive before somebody gets barred? Is it no warnings? one warning or multiple warnings? Why are you not all on the same page?
The fact that this is disproportionate to the crime, like to the dining hall from the back door means I have to be isolated from my community. If they cared about accountability, if they cared about protocol, at this point Kent Devereaux would have apologized publicly and acknowledged what happened. In full transparency, I want the board members to know what happened to me. I want every person in faculty and staff to know what happened to me. It’s no joke, like honestly like I’m an international student, so I’m not even as culturally fluent as an American would be, but even I know like on the streets if you are experiencing something with a person of color, like if they, for example, the pickpocket or something, right? You’re not supposed to call the cops unless your life is directly threatened, because if you involve the police in this country, whether a person of color is not going to come out of it alive.
Now I know I’m not black, I’m still a person of color and immigrant Muslim, and also the trauma that we all carry from that, and the fact that Campus Safety did this. This is in some uninformed staff member. This is the entity that is responsible for enhancing a sense of security on campus. What happened to me has completely destroyed a sense of security for other students, too, because they understand how there is no process here. You know, and at any point, they can be caught up in something and there is also then no accountability.
Do you think that, and I’m not trying to feed words into your mouth, but do you think there’s a specific reason why you were- I mean, you mentioned being Muslim and being in the meetings or are you aware of a specific reason that you were targeted for the barring?
I honestly don’t know. I mean, maybe it was my activism, maybe it is a combination of things. Maybe it’s just ineptitude, but even ineptitude itself is such a big problem at this level. That it doesn’t excuse it. But I do think it was probably my involvement with activism. That’s probably my best guess.
Do you, again I’m trying not to put words into your mouth, but I want to get an answer. In the meeting with the various administrators they mentioned accountability, and you keep mentioning that they talk about accountability. Do you think that that was in any way genuine or do you think that was a way to get you off their back or a way to brush you off?
Even if they didn’t mean that, the way it played out was that these were meaningless. Because there I didn’t receive anything afterwards about accountability. If anything, honestly, you know, I remember that when I was talking to to them and I brought up something about Officer [Officer 2] and how her reputation precedes her, Jasmine said, do you know if any of your friends who told you about her actually went through the official structures to file a complaint or something? And I said no, and the thing that is so ironic here is if I had never had that meeting, I wouldn’t have gotten barred. So, me going through the official channels to file a complaint became like bait. They used that meeting as bait against me to say well, we told you not to violate any policies which again is not what happened. They had to mischaracterize that to even use it as bait, but they did, and they have all the power and no accountability so they can do that and get away with it. They used it to say “Oh, we warned you and you violated it anyways, so now we’re going to bar you and it’s going to be justified.”
So, not only was there no accountability, but it actually caused me more harm than if I had just kept my mouth shut. And then they complain about why students don’t go through the official channels if they experience some sort of harm.
Disgraceful behavior. Goucher owes us a public apology for Parsa’s treatment, among other things.