By Wes Ferguson
Daily Texan Staff
He's read the news reports about federal law enforcement raids on Muslim student housing in Arizona and Idaho, and he's even heard rumors of Federal Bureau of Investigation activity in Austin.
They're nothing but rumors, but if these things are happening at other colleges and universities around the nation, they're likely to happen here, too, said Mani Mostofi, a Middle Eastern Studies graduate student.
And Mostofi said that prospect is a little scary.
Mostofi is the chairman of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, which supports Palestinian independence from the state of Israel.
"There's a fear within our organization of coming out in support of Palestinian rights because so often our detractors will try to link that to anti-Americanism or terrorism, which is absurd," Mostofi said. "Our organization repeats time and time again our stance on those issues, that we are against such violence."
He said he believes that pro-Palestinian activity is under surveillance by the Department of Homeland Security.
"It's a culture of fear," he said. "People from Austin have been deported and lost their residency because they're Middle Eastern. It becomes scary for our membership, becomes scary for a lot of Arab and Muslim students who want to participate."
But René Salinas, a spokesman for the FBI's San Antonio field office, said that Mostofi's concerns are unfounded.
"Unless you're a terrorist, you have nothing to fear," he said.
University officials say they have heard of no FBI arrests or interrogations on campus. Librarians have not reported any encounters with agents interested in readers' records. And requests for public information on international students have slowed to less than a trickle.
"I've neither seen nor heard any signs of them," Harold Billings, director of general libraries, said of Austin's FBI agents based at a satellite office on Research Boulevard.
Kevin Hegarty, vice president of financial affairs, said the University is following the law and protecting itself by requiring law enforcement agents to provide a subpoena before handing over information about students not usually open to the public.
"We don't want someone coming in here casually and saying, 'Hey, give me some [private] information," Hegarty said.
"It is our responsibility, whether by law or not, to protect our student body and faculty and staff," he added. "Any agency that would want to come on campus to seek any information or speak to our students would need to clear that with us."
Civil libertarians fear a return to the 1960s and '70s, when the FBI spied on, infiltrated and disrupted civil rights, anti-war and student groups, often illegally. FBI abuses led to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which limits the amount of information that can be obtained about students without a subpoena or court order.
But Salinas said that a return to those days "will never happen," thanks to new laws and oversights placed on the agency.
UT Police Chief Jeff Van Slyke said he fielded some concerns from students after he allowed one of his officers to work with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies as part of a joint terrorism task force.
"There's this old mindset out there that Big Brother is watching, and this task force is going to act like they did in the '60s and '70s," he said.
But Van Slyke said the increased cooperation with the FBI and others should give students peace of mind.
He said that his officer, whose name he would not disclose, works full time at the FBI's Austin satellite office, following leads and gathering information in an effort to combat terrorism. He said he does not keep up with task force activity.
"I don't ask, and they don't tell, unless there's something of significant importance to the UT campus or the area around campus," he said.
Hegarty oversees the Univer-sity's public information office. He said he could probably count on one hand the requests and subpoenas for information his office has received from law enforcement agents who hoped to use the information in the war against terrorism.
"I would say it's an extremely rare occasion, but it has happened," he said.
Collin Bost, who was president of Students for the ACLU at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, said he believes the FBI is watching students on campus.
"I think it can really cause some harm, especially at the University," he said. "It's an open marketplace of ideas, and when a person is scared about monitoring activities, that could cause a chilling effect on speech."
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