A Loyola student has been banned from the campus of our nearest neighbor, Tulane University. But Dan Coville, finance sophomore, said that he has been wrongly accused and considers the punishment merely a cop-out by the Tulane University Police Department.

On Thursday, Sept. 13, at approximately 2:30 in the afternoon, Coville said he was walking from Loyola through Tulane’s campus to his Broadmoor home. He was just approaching Turchim Stadium on Ben Weiner Dr. when two TUPD officers approached.

Coville, not expecting to be approached since he maintains that he had done nothing wrong, kept walking.

“They got out of the vehicle and asked to search me. They asked me to put my hands on their vehicle and patted me down. They asked why I was there, where I was going, and if I had been trying to steal anything. It was all very confusing,” Coville said.

When the officers didn’t find anything, they accused Coville of a new crime.

“Then they were like, by the way – you’re trespassing,” he said.

The police called the Loyola University Police Department, who reported that they had no criminal records of Coville. Coville was then transported to the TUPD headquarters, where he was placed in a holding cell.

“Once I was in the cell, I was thinking ‘Okay, this is bad.’ There was a note painted in white nail polish on the floor that said ‘Hang in there,'” he said.

Soon, he was brought into a conference room where his photo was taken and he was asked to sign a form that said he would not step foot on Tulane’s campus or legal action would be taken against him.

“I knew it would be pointless to dispute it all because I knew that Tulane is a private sector with private property. They have the right to say I can’t be there, and I don’t have the right to say I do,” he said.

TUPD was contacted for comment, but did not respond. Michael Strecker, Director of Public Relations, issued this statement:

“On the afternoon of Thursday, Sept. 13, several Tulane University students approached two Tulane police officers who were patrolling the campus and told them that an individual was standing near a rack of bicycles and looking at the bikes in a manner that the students thought was suspicious.

The officers brought the subject, who fit the description of the suspect in several recent bicycle thefts, to Tulane police headquarters for questioning and then released him.”

Coville said that on his walk, he encountered a tire in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the Reilly Student Recreation Center and moved the tire next to a nearby bike rack.

“It seems like they didn’t want to really deal with the complaint, so they just stopped me and took me in to get it taken care of. I’m sure it was very easy for the officers to do this because I did everything they said. That’s what I thought you’re supposed to do with cops,” he said.

Coville said that even if the ban were repealed, he would rarely go on Tulane’s campus anyway.

Jennie Gutierrez can be reached at [email protected]