Philip Sandifer is a graduate student in U. Fla’s English program, and maintains a personal writing journal called “Pulp Decameron,” where he posts very short stories in the styles of various pulp genres. His recent story "I am ready to serve my country" caused some controversy on the University of Florida campus.

The story, which features a young man stalking women and committing murder just prior to joining the military, apparently gave some unnamed person cause for complaint, and that complaint was made to the president of the University of Florida. The President's office, in turn, notified the campus police, who contacted Sandifer via this voicemail, which he responded to. The U Fl Detective, Susan Sanders, told Sandifer somebody had "expressed concern" about his writing on the Internet. After some conversation, Sandifer was able to identify the "internet writing to be the pulp decameron journal. LiveJournal is not U Fla network resource or intellectual assett, and Sandifer had never used U Florida's network resources to update it, he basically told them that the matter was not their concern. The detective, Susan Sanders, said, "Well if you won't talk to about this his, we'll deal with this some other way," and hung up on Sandifer.

Two detectives, including Sanders, then followed up with a visit to Sandifer's apartment. The two detectives identified themselves and were courteous. They asked to be let in to discuss the matter with Sandifer. He agreed. In Sandifer's own words,

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.

As a friend of mine might say, the best way to avoid suspicion is to lead a virtuous life. On the other hand, There are elements of this story that are chilling on the face of it. Sandifer is a peer reviewer for the online encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA, and is engaged in a long running feud with another user or group of users (there are links to this in Sandifer's livejournal). The implication is that the U Fla people were tipped off by someone Sandifer had angered at the Wikipedia group. Having read some of the comments attacking Sandifer on the Wikipedia review message board, I can readily beleive someone might have a grudge against him.

It's not the invasion of Sandifer's rights of privacy (such as they are in Bush's America), or the denial of artistic expression that bothers me. Those things did happen, but he appears to be fairly stoic about the whole thing The police did what they were told to do and didn't take Sandifer into a back room and beat him with a rubber hose. I just get offended at such obviously bad police work. Writing in a literary journal, when Sandifer is clearly engaged in studying for a literary career... that shouldn't be grounds for reasonable suspicion of anything.

Sandifer

technorati tags:Sandifer, Privacy, Pulp, Decameron

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