Lifting lifetime bans on the U of M campus

Hundreds of people banned from the University of Michigan campus may soon be able to walk again freely on the Ann Arbor campus.  More than 2 thousand people landed on U of M’s lifetime campus ban list during the past decade for a variety of offenses.  

In the past, if you landed on the list, you had little chance of ever getting permission to walk again on the Ann Arbor campus. 

But concerns the process may violate people’s rights on a public university campus prompted the university to revise the rules to allow the bans to expire in some cases in one year.

Suellyn Scarnecchia is the university’s general counsel.   She admits “no policy is perfect”. 

“I hope that it provides a very good balance between fairness to the individual and the safety of the community.”  

 U of M’s trespassing policy came under scrutiny after the university banned an assistant state attorney general who was accused of stalking U of M’s student body president.   

The ACLU is still worried that the university’s trespassing policy may be used to limit free speech on campus.