The University of Michigan acted like a perfectly trained abusive parent on Tuesday night, 17 April 2001. "How many times have I told you not to do that?" and "I warned you, one more stunt like that, young man, and you'll find yourself hurtin'!" -- those were the implicit words of an administration claiming to act in loco parentis, but in fact acting like loco parents. No, I didn't hear those precise words spoken, nor did I read them in a University press release. But actions speak louder than words, and those are the words the University's actions screamed.

With an emotional edge -- "we're gonna get you after you humiliated us last year, you goddam juvenile delinquents" -- and a zeal bordering on the pathological, University administrators cracked down on harmless runners, arresting one woman in front of a booing crowd of about 200 onlookers and threatening several male and female runners with arrest if they didn't drop everything -- literally and figuratively -- and put those clothes on NOW! One or two male runners panicked as they saw the wall of cops awaiting them at The Cube. Assuming (as they had been promised earlier in the race by city cops) that they would be arrested by a phalanx of police at the end of the race, they panicked, turned around, and ran away. The cops, outraged by this display of youthful inability to read their minds (the cops probably would have just told them to get dressed -- NOW! -- and nothing more, if they complied, NOW!), took off after them in hot pursuit, keys jangling, uniforms bobbing, as if these college dudes had just raped some 7-year-old. One woman arriving with her truly feminist friends was arrested, her only crime apparently having been waiting maybe 5 seconds longer to start putting on her pants than her accompanying runners. And apparently all four of the women are wanted by the police; their names were taken and the student newspaper reported that warrants against them are being "sought" by the Ann Arbor police.

Hidden Video Camera

Oh, by the way, officer -- I got it all on videotape. I don't think any of you saw my videocam (new for me this year). One onlooker apparently realized that that nest-like thing lodged in that tree was really a bundle containing my cam (and some camouflage -- get it?? tee hee), but no one else did, I think. And as luck would have it, a University cop forced a guy to put his clothes on at what turned out to be a spot directly in the line of sight of our videotaping tool. The words are pretty darn clear, too; the built-in mike worked much better than I had any right to expect.

I think the police pegged me, if they noticed me at all, as just another camera-toting pervert, trying to make a quick buck off the students' nude run. How wrong they were! No, I was a journalist this year -- forced to become one due to circumstances -- and it didn't seem to cross their minds that a journalist might be a pervert, too.

So what's on the tape? No, no, you won't see any Rodney-King-like beating; no Driving While Black. But if you were at the run last year, you'll be astonished at the tone of voice and the aggressiveness of the officer(s) stationed at The Cube this year. Big, BIG difference. Someone in the administration got really upset that their clampdown didn't work last year, and that someone was bent on revenge.

No, there's nothing the cop did which was unlawful. But revenge isn't pretty, and this wasn't pretty, either.