The participants on the popular forum have little empathy for the unlawful detention and false arrest of Christiaan A. Hart-Nibbrig, co-publisher and editor of Lancaster Post.
Lost in the many discussions about the F&M Public Safety Officers’ misconduct on June 3 on Marietta Avenue is the fact that Christiaan Hart-Nibbrig’s individual rights were squashed.
No one seems concerned that the Public Safety Officers arrested, handcuffed, and transported Hart-Nibbrig to their campus office. There they held him for a duration, only to release him and issue a baseless Defiant Trespass letter.
There were NO allegations that Hart-Nibbrig ever trespassed. “I have no idea why he was arrested,” said Dulcey Antonucci, Director of Media Relations of Franklin & Marshall College. When stopped and held by the F&M Public Safety Officers, he was on the south side of Marietta Avenue, far away from the F&M President’s home.
But the regulars of TalkBack rather bicker about Ron Harper, Jr.’s controversial journalism efforts.
It seems to NewsLanc that Hart-Nibbrig’s biggest crime was to be with Ron Harper, Jr. when F&M’s Public Safety Officers swooped down seemingly to punish the effrontery of two small publishers for being critical of F&M’s president John Fry and the presumptiousness of Harper for pursuing an interview.
TalkBack users should consider they could be the next arrested person, anytime they are near F&M or its remote real estate holdings.* If John Fry does not like what Hart-Nibbrig writes, who is to say he will like what the posters at TalkBack say?
*NewsLanc has serious doubts that F&M Security has the legal right to take police action off campus and is having the relevant law investigated.
