Court Hears 'Game' Incidents

It isn’t that Ashanti A. Decker ’02 denies she slapped a Harvard Business School (HBS) security guard during this year’s Harvard-Yale tailgates—she just alleges he pushed her first.

“I did slap him when he came forward at me,” Decker said. “It was all a defensive measure. It is very odd that Harvard would employ someone who uses physical violence on their alums.”

At a hearing yesterday, a Brighton District Court judge dismissed the charges against Decker concerning the alleged assault of Arthur W. Mckenzie at HBS during the Harvard-Yale festivities. Mckenzie agreed to drop the charges as long as Decker apologized for the incident.

“I was forced to apologize,” said Decker, who also dropped her counter complaint against the guard yesterday. “He didn’t apologize to me but it’s easier than having to come back.”

Decker contended that she and James D. Mayers ’02 entered the Harvard Business School to use the rest rooms on Nov. 20 when Mckenzie asked them to leave—along with some pushing and a few blows to the neck.

“He pushed us both and refused to give us his ID number or show us his badge,” Decker said. “He karate-chopped my friend in the neck a few times. I just came to visit. It’s ridiculous—you can’t just treat your alums this way.”

But Steven G. Catalano, Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) spokesman, said Decker did not mention to police that she had been assaulted that day.“These allegations of her being assaulted are new,” said Catalano, who also said police reports indicate that Mckenzie was the victim.

Decker, who received a summons to appear in court on the night of the incident but was not arrested, said she suspects her race was a factor. Both she and Mayer are black.

“I feel it’s very discriminatory,” said Decker. “If we were two older white men in blue blazers, he wouldn’t have screamed at us and he definitely would not have pushed us.”

But Catalano said race had nothing to do with the incident. And Decker’s attorney said the hearing did not confront the issue of race.

“It was a mutual dismissal,” said Burt A. Nadler, Decker’s attorney. “Each dropped the case against each other.”

Brighton’s court also heard two other Harvard-Yale cases yesterday—one charging two underage Yale students with possession of alcohol and another concerning a trespass offense committed by the leader of a police watchdog group.

Katie E. Crandall and Aaron L. Lambert, who declined to comment for this article, were sentenced to 20 hours of community service and required to attend two Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Crandall was additionally ordered to write a letter of apology for allegedly pouring out her alcoholic beverage on the shoes of an officer.

“I don’t know you; I don’t know your relationship to alcohol,” said Judge A. Peter Anderson. “But it was such to bring you here. You might be saying to yourself, I go to Yale, that’s not going to happen to me...addiction to drugs or alcohol knows no class, knows no education.”

The two third-year Yale students were underage and Lambert allegedly presented the officer with false identification.

James K. Herms was arraigned yesterday for violating the trespass order against him when he walked into the athletic complex on Nov. 20.

Catalano said senior-level officials at the University requested Herms’ trespass warning last fall after alleged inappropriate behavior with undergraduate females.

Herms founded the Student-Alumni Committee on Institutional Security Policy, a non-profit campus security consulting firm that has been critical of HUPD in the past.

Herms claimed the football team left complimentary tickets for him at the Murr Center, which he planned to give to two of his employees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

But Herms admitted his intention in coming to The Game was not only to catch a glimpse of the Harvard-Yale rivalry and attend the tailgate, but also to recruit fresh-faced Elis for his group.

“I was handing out flyers at the tailgate,” Herms said. A police officer recognized him there. “He said to me, ‘Is there anything you can say so that I don’t have to arrest you?’”

Because Herms said he told the officer he was just about to leave, the officer did not arrest him. Herms asserted yesterday he has no moral obligation to follow a trespass order he considers to be unethical.

“Mr. Herms’s position, as is mine, is that Harvard seems to be enforcing a trespassing order which we believe has no validity,” said Nadler, who is also Herms’s attorney.

“This has nothing to do with Mr. Herms’s age—it has everything to do with his behavior,” said Catalano. A pre-trial hearing for Herms is set for Jan. 4.

—Staff writer Robin M. Peguero can be reached at peguero@fas.harvard.edu.