Tuesday, July 20, 1999
Pickets back MU students
Seven on trial after traffic was disrupted
BY STEVE KEMME
The Cincinnati Enquirer
OXFORD — About 10 people demonstrated peacefully in front of the Oxford Courthouse Monday in support of seven Miami University students who are on trial for criminal charges stemming from a public protest of a racial incident last year.
The demonstrators, most of whom were Miami students, held pro-free speech signs and passed out fliers.
Carol Tyson, one of the demonstration's organizers, said the arrest of the seven students in November violated their First Amendment rights.
“I supported what they were doing,” said Ms. Tyson, a 25-year-old philosophy graduate student at Miami. “They were speaking out against the hostile environment that people of color endure at Miami.”
Police arrested the seven Nov. 11 after about 30 students — most of them African-Americans — stood along a busy section of U.S. 27 near Ohio 73 and stepped into traffic.
The students' three-day jury trial began Monday in Butler County Area I Court in Oxford. Judge Rob Lyons is presiding.
The seven students had participated in the second consecutive day of protests on U.S. 27.
On Nov. 10, the day before the arrests, about 100 students linked arms and stopped traffic at the same intersection.
The two protests were an angry reaction to an Oct. 30 racial incident at the university's Center for Black Culture and Learning. Racist, anti-gay and pro-Ku Klux Klan messages appeared on bulletin boards and on computer screens.
In a startling twist to the case, two Miami black student leaders resigned from the university on Jan. 20 after officials accused them of posting the racist messages.
Nathaniel Snow, 22, of College Hill, former president of the Black Student Action Association, and Brad M. Allen, 21, of suburban Cleveland, were charged with criminal mischief and criminal trespassing.
Police said 87 percent of the fingerprints on the fliers matched those of Mr. Snow and Mr. Allen.
Their trial is scheduled to begin Aug. 23. Mr. Allen is also one of the seven now standing trial on disorderly conduct charges.
On Nov. 11, Mr. Snow had conferred with university President James C. Garland about how to improve race relations on the predominantly white campus.
Taft scuttles sales tax plan
Anderson High to stay Redskins
Bad air likely to linger for the week
Corrections made in way trash hauled
Headline: 'Footsteps on moon!'
Neighbors missed auto
911 service cut off for 12 hours
Taft gives Bush Ohio thumbs-up
Bell's upstream ride goes smoothly
A generation will remember Jackie's boy
A feel for farming
Friends of slain West End man 'can't figure out the reason why'
Let out, Watts now prisoner of his memories
Pickets back MU students
Butler Co. high school backs off on uniforms
Butler traffic watch reports big drop in DUI accidents, no deaths
Clermont's 150th fair has touch of history
Ky. man helped Kennedy keep fit
New law empowers townships
Parking at airport may get easier
Plant will give town a new life
Study: Ohio education agency lost, inefficient
Walnut Hills man found dead in Fla.
Buyouts may solve flood woes
Center accepts check
GET TO IT
Juvenile judge must decide: Is teen a victim or attacker?
Two new defendants OK'd in school asbestos case
Police, coroner study death of West End girl, 4
Principal coming out of retirement for one-year stint at Donovan
School's in session for Heritage Hill kids
Storms sap power in 200 homes
TRISTATE DIGEST
Victimized family forgives man who shot at them
