Fourteen Hanover Police officers raided Alpha Delta fraternity a few days before Commencement. They left with at least 10 crates of evidence after five hours labor without managing to find a sexually explicit tape, their alleged reason for entering the house. This use of force may have been justified by the size of the house or by the seriousness and timeliness of the allegations. Indeed, the crime of taping sex without the consent of both parties, though a misdemeanor, carries up to a $2,000 fine or a year in prison. But because all documents relating to the case are sealed, no one knows if such a search was justified.
Hanover Police refuses to release anything but the most basic details to the press, arguing that details would compromise the privacy of the victim and the accused. Police Chief Nicholas Giaccone will not provide the public with the reasons for entering the fraternity, even with all private information (including names) redacted, because students could "fill in the blanks." These privacy concerns are valid, especially because of the case's details.
But when Hanover Police Captain Frank Moran released both the name of the female victim and the AD member accused of the illegal taping to the house's alumni adviser, John Engelman '68, the names entered the public domain. That leak alone was a grave breach of the accuser's privacy, which she presumably entrusted to the police. At the present moment, it is the integrity of the AD brotherhood, and the handful of other students who know the accuser's identity, rather than the legal protection of the police department, that guards the young woman's privacy. The breach, which Giaccone and Moran dismissed as necessary, allowed undergraduate members at the College to know the name of the woman and fraternity member involved without knowing anything else -- save that the police were searching for a sex tape.
Surely Engelman should be admonished for inappropriately sharing private information with even more individuals, but the greater misstep belongs to the Hanover Police Department. Publicly, the police have prioritized privacy concerns over letting the public determine the legitimacy of the search, but through their actions the police have failed on both measures.
The actions of Hanover Police leave Dartmouth students confused. Was the search warrant based on solid ground? If private information such as the accuser's name was essentially released, why is the warrant for a "principally closed" investigation still sealed? The police have leaked exactly the wrong information: AD members know the woman's identity and the public is ignorant of the conditions under which the warrant was issued.
