Hi JD: Thanks for reading and for commenting. If you read the Court’s decision, and you can use the hyperlink in my post, you’ll see the discussion of that very point. There’s an Indiana law that explicitly allows private universities and colleges to establish police forces. Judge Hostetler, and case law, recognize that when a private police force acts as a police force, e.g. when it arrests someone, vis a constitutional issue, it’s public. The Court, and the three previous PAC’s, though, found no support in the law for the notion that a private university becomes public for all purposes simply because it establishes a police force. Stated another way, when NDSP arrested Tommy Rees, Tommy was immediately draped in the protections afforded by the constitutions of the State of Indiana and of the United States of America. The criminal prosecutor would be obligated to turn over all evidence to him. Tommy, though, would have no right to the minutes of the campus computer services meeting the night of his arrest. Make sense?

DJ: Thanks for reading and for commenting. I have to think that ESPN’s higher-ups were well-aware of the story and that they were at least complicit in the author’s slant. It’s frankly bizarre that ESPN, no great fan of ours, would include the Irish in a grouping of ten major football and basketball programs while leaving out Duke, Alabama, the entire Big XII, etc. If Ms. Lavigne’s purpose were to assail private universities for being able to form police departments while remaining private, that’s one thing. But to lose the battle, for now, over access and then spin it into a monstrous plot that sweeps PAC’s and hapless judges before it, is entirely another. The point of my post was to look at what the Notre Dame decision actually said, since it’s quite different than what ESPN featured. Ah, well. At least the press is free.