Anti-Apartheid Students Sue USC, L.A. Over Alleged Beating by Police

Student activists who claim they were beaten by USC security guards and Los Angeles police officers when they tried to deliver a protest letter to school officials filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit Wednesday against the university and the city of Los Angeles.

The suit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleges that the security guards led students to a campus alleyway and then attacked them after they tried to present the university Board of Trustees with a letter demanding that the school divest its holdings in South African companies. The incident was videotaped by a local television station and a USC film student.

Nine USC students and two Occidental College students are named as plaintiffs in the suit, which also includes Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates and USC President James Zumberge as co-defendants.

At a news conference Wednesday, four of the plaintiffs played the videotape of the fracas, which they said erupted after they tried to enter the board’s meeting Feb. 7 at USC’s Bovard Auditorium.

The students said that when about 15 of them entered the building, campus security guards ushered them through a maze of hallways and out of a back door leading to an alley. Awaiting them, the students said, were several security guards and LAPD officers--some in riot gear--who then attacked them.

The videotape shows campus security guards jabbing and shoving several students with night sticks as the activists clamber to get back inside Bovard Auditorium. LAPD officers are shown watching the fray but not participating.

“As I entered the alleyway, it was chaos,” said Michele Milner, a second-year law student at USC. “Security guards immediately began beating me. They hit me in the stomach several times.”

An LAPD spokesman declined comment on the allegations. In a statement released by the university, Lyn Hutton, senior vice president of administration, said the university already had begun to investigate the incident but suspended the probe after the suit was filed.

“In light of the filing of the suit against the university, President Zumberge has now asked that the investigative panel recess while we evaluate the impact of this litigation,” Hutton said.

The students, who had rallied outside Bovard Hall with about 50 other students from both USC and Occidental, said they were not planning to disrupt the board meeting.

“At no time did we conceive of crashing the trustees’ meeting,” Milner said of the rally. “We just wanted to be in an area that was audible to the trustees. We just wanted to peacefully take them the letter.”

They said their anti-apartheid group, the USC Divestment Coalition, had taken the university trustees a similar letter last year without incident. USC maintains a policy of “selective divestment,” in which the school invests in South African companies it claims are working to peacefully dismantle apartheid.

Throughout the news conference, the students and their lawyer, Dan Stormer, compared the alleged beating incident with actions by South African police.

“Like the South African government, USC has no tolerance for dissenters,” said Harry Brighouse, a graduate student and organizer for the Divestment Coalition. “We were being non-violent throughout the entire incident.”

Stormer contended that the school also videotaped the incident for “files it’s keeping on student activists.”

“That is unconstitutional, an invasion of privacy,” Stormer said.

While the suit did not request a specific amount in damages, Stormer said he would probably ask for $2 million if the case goes to court.

Meanwhile, the students said, they would repeat their calls for the university to divest its South African holdings.