To be perfectly clear, all stories previously posted that were written by me (Philip Sandifer) are fiction.
This story is not fiction. For obvious reasons, I am editorializing minimally about this. I expect that you can guess as to my opinions on the situation.
On May 12, 2006, I recieved an e-mail from a member of the departmental administration at the University of Florida asking for my contact information. I supplied it.
Later that day, I recieved a voice mail message from the University of Florida Police. That message can be found
here.
I called them back from Bradley International Airport, in Hartford, CT, and found out that somebody had "expressed concern" about my writing on the Internet. After some conversation, I was able to determine that the site in question was this one. Since I have never updated this journal using any University of Florida computing resources, I expressed my belief that this was not the University of Florida's business, and noted that I did not want to come in to talk to the police. The detective, Susan Sanders, said, "Well if you won't talk to us about this, we'll deal with this some other way," and hung up on me.
I then e-mailed my Director of Graduate Studies, Kenneth Kidd. That e-mail, sent the evening of May 12, 2006, is behind
Kenneth:
I'm just sending this to you at present. If you think it should be
forwarded to Dr. Leavey or anybody else, you have my full permission
to do so.
I just got a call from the University of Florida Police Department.
Apparently somebody expressed concern to them about something I had
posted somewhere on the Internet. After some discussion, I was able
to figure out that it had to do with a LiveJournal account I use
occasionally to post short fiction pieces. The account can be found
at
http://pulpdecameron.livejournal.com if you want to look at it.
The detective (!) was not inclined to provide details about what on
Earth is wrong with that site over the phone.
I have never updated that LiveJournal using UF computer resources,
and since even if I had nothing on that LiveJournal comes anywhere
close to violating the law or campus policy. Frankly, nothing on that
LiveJournal comes anywhere close to violating anything of interest
anywhere. I was, for relatively obvious reasons, uninterested in
going and discussing my writing with the police outside of an actual
claim that I was doing anything wrong, both because it seemed to be
none of UFs business, and because of that whole First Amendment
thing. When I expressed this opinion to the officer, she said "Well
we'll handle it some other way," and hung up on me.
At this point, it struck me as the sort of thing I should let you
know about.
I am 99% certain that this involves a harassing user I was involved
in banning from Wikipedia some time ago. In order to block him
effectively, we had to block the entirety of the University of
Northern Iowa. This block did not make UNI's IT department happy, and
they contacted Wikipedia. We told them that if they stopped the user
in question from editing Wikipedia, we'd unban them. This was a week
or two ago, and something like calling UF in retaliation is, frankly,
completely in the MO of this guy.
What should I do here?
Best,
Phil Sandifer
(Note: The claim that it was a specific Wikipedia user was made before I was aware of a whole thread on an anti-Wikipedia messageboard about this journal. So while I was right that it was a disgruntled Wikipedia editor, there is more than a 1% chance that it was not the one I initially thought.)
The e-mail was forwarded to my department chair and to the professor who sent me the e-mail requesting my contact info.
Today (May 16, 2006), two University of Florida police officers came to my apartment - Detective Sanders and a male officer I do not recall the name of - and asked if they could come in to talk to me. I allowed them entry. They asked about the nature of Pulp Decameron, and I explained its original purpose. They then presented me with a printout of one of the earliest Pulp Decameron stories,
I am Ready to Serve my Country. Highlighted were the sentences "For the past four years I have meticulously watched the same woman through my telescope." and "A month ago I went out and found a homeless man. I lured him to the railroad tracks and garroted him. The police have yet to name a suspect. I am confident that they never will. The experience was exhilarating, but not so exhilarating that I would consider myself a psychopath. I am confident I can keep my random murders down to one a month with minimal effort." (Ironically, this was the story that Eric Burns posted to Websnark, in a move that got me about half of my traffic).
I explained that the story was fictional. They asked me where I got the idea. I declined to answer. A discussion ensued about the importance of following up these things after Columbine, when there is a complaint. I pointed out that there is nothing illegal about writing and posting fiction.
At this point, I shared with them my suspicion that the incident started when someone I had banned from Wikipedia had retaliated by contacting my administration to complain. They did not seem interested in following up on this, beyond saying that the e-mail did not indicate that it was the person I had thought it was, though they conceded that it is easy to send anonymous e-mails.
They then noted that I seemed suspicious of them and hostile, and asked if I had had previous bad experiences with the police. I noted that my unwillingness to cooperate was based on philosophical issues, not personal ones.
They then said that one way to make this all go away would be to compare my fingerprints to Federal records. I indicated that I did not consent to be fingerprinted in this matter. They asked if I had been previously fingerprinted by the University. I said I had not. They conceded that they knew this already.
They informed me that the complaint was coming from high up in the University, and that they really wanted to be able to say that I had cooperated fully. I repeated that this did not seem to me to be their business.
They asked explicitly if I would be willing to be fingerprinted. I repeated that I was not, and asked them to please leave, saying that I did not want to talk to them further without a member of my department present. I had to repeat this request three times.
As they left, they observed a number of prescription pill bottles on my desk (Empty ones I had failed to throw away), and asked if I took a lot of prescription drugs. I reiterated that they should leave, and they did so, saying that I should set up an appointment with a member of my department and contact them to let them know.
At this point, I called Kenneth. He suggested, after consulting with the department chair, that I contact Student Legal Services. Unfortunately, since it's UF Police, they were unable to help. He also noted that the police had already been in contact with the department, and that the department had indicated to the police that this was not worth following up on. Since Student Legal Services is unable to help, I arranged, as previously planned, to meet with Kenneth and the police on Thursday, at 3:30.
I will post more updates on this situation when there is new information.