Peter Halas '98 has admitted to having sex with a 15-year-old female student at a high school where he was teaching. Halas pleaded guilty to official misconduct in a New Jersey courtroom on Tuesday. He said he had a sexual relationship with the girl from April to June 2005, according to the Asbury Park Press, but charges of sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child were dropped in a plea bargain, so he will not have to register as a sex offender.
"He just wanted to get it over with and behind him and move on with his life," his lawyer Daniel Carluccio told The Dartmouth. Carluccio said Halas is "humiliated and ashamed," but resigned to the probability he will go to jail after his July sentencing.
Halas was fired from his job as a history teacher and a basketball coach at Point Pleasant Borough High School last July after a friend of the girl reported the relationship and he was arrested. At Dartmouth, "PJ" was captain on the men's basketball team, member of Theta Delta Chi fraternity and majored in government. He faces up to 10 years in prison.
Fifteen Dartmouth students are set to be in Washington, D.C., today as part of a gathering of student activists from across the country concerned about the genocide in Sudan, according to Chase Hogle '07. The national group Students Taking Action Now: Darfur is holding a four-day weekend that promises to train students in the basics of lobbying and then send them to Capitol Hill to ask members of Congress to commit more help in the region. On Sunday, thousands are expected to turn out for an afternoon rally on the Mall. The College students involved are part of Darfur Action Group and Hillel.
The College's Institute for Security Technology Studies was set to cooperate in a cyberterrorism drill at a law enforcement conference in Washington on Tuesday. The conference schedule set aside eight hours for the simulation of a "full-scale cyber-attack to demonstrate how vulnerable networks hamper the ability to respond to physical terrorist attacks" in cooperation with the U.S. Military Academy, also referred to as West Point. Computer science professor David Kotz runs the Dartmouth center dedicated to research in homeland security.
