On January 14th, Economics Professor John Hall accused student government Chief of Staff, Zach Bucharest, of being an undercover agent de provocateur for the FBI.

When this story was first reported, Hall’s outburst was described as a thirty-minute verbal attack. Others claimed that the incident lasted only five minutes, and that Hall had been very calm. However, once more reports started to come in, it became clear that the truth was that the incident was closer to fifteen minutes, and Hall didn’t shout, nor was he completely calm. As the story developed, this disparity of narratives seemed to be the theme. The truth wasn’t at either extreme, but somewhere else.

Where is the middle between Professor Hall being a lunatic and being correct? What’s the in between for Zach Bucharest being an FBI informant, and him being a random victim of insanity? In the end it seems that both parties may have to accept some responsibility for what happened in class that day.

Bucharest: ASPSU Chief of Staff, moonlighting as a part-time arms dealer?

Daniel Dreier, a fellow student in Hall’s economics class, and Sanford both describe Zach as having a rich military history. Bucharest has verified that he was a sniper, and according to Jon Sanford—veteran of Iraq, friend, and co-worker—Zach spent time in Special Forces, and has seen combat. Dan said that Zach also claimed to have done some private sector security work. From the descriptions of his behavior, it also seems that Bucharest may be suffering from some level of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

According to Dreier and another student, Tim Dalton, Zach told of time he shot a car because the alarm was going off. Also, stated Dreier, Bucharest claimed that he once drew his gun on a person who was aiming a laser pointer at him from an apartment window downtown. Several students including Dalton, Dreier, and Jeremy Veysseire, attested that at the economics department holiday party, Zach described to students the process of making self-igniting Molotov cocktails. Now this may seem crazy, but it’s important to step outside the ‘civilian’ experience for a moment. While this may seem like aberrant behavior to many people, it is possible that it may seem to Zach, who has spent most of his adult life in the military, that discussing such matters is entirely normal. It turns out that while Bucharest said that he "cannot imagine what I did or said to cause him [Hall] to treat me the way he did," Bucharest did apparently behave in a way that may have led Hall to believe he was attempting to incite violent and or destructive behavior from students.

This picture of Bucharest, added to other pieces of information, may seem alarming. He reportedly carries a gun to school. Bucharest, at one point, showed Dan Dreier a Glock 26 that he had stored in his jacket pocket, along with two extra magazines. Dan did not actually see the gun while on campus, but Zach did show it to him within a short period of time after they had left university property. Dreier did mention that he believed that Zach did not have a round chambered in the weapon. Both Jon Sanford (student body President) and newly-appointed Vice President Eddie Hallman have gone on record saying that they think Bucharest has a concealed carry permit, but neither has seen it. Same for Dan Dreier, he also believes that Zach has one, but has not seen it. No one interviewed has gone on record saying that Zach's actual permit has been seen.

On several occasions, Bucharest offered to procure guns and ammunition for students through a friend of his.  No transactions were said to have actually taken place involving the students interviewed. Now, these guns aren’t hard to find, nor are they particularly expensive. The deal wasn’t exceptional which also provokes suspicion, as the AK-47 rifles that Bucharest was offering can be found for a very comparable price through other gun dealers. There was no incentive for students to buy the guns from Zach on the basis of price.

Zach’s online life is a bit disturbing. There is a YouTube account associated with the email address that used to be available on the ASPSU website—until it was recently replaced with a new one. There is active discussion about the current incident on the YouTube site, and there are many (older) postings on his page that contain anti-Islamic rhetoric. The actual comments made by Zach’s profile were not of a directly anti-Islamic nature, but there was no criticism of the comments coming from others. But many of these posts were several years old, from before Bucharest came to PSU.

After hearing that Hall owned a gun, Zach allegedly asked Hall if he wanted to go shooting. Hall, who traditionally has close relationships with students, reportedly declined. According to Dan Dreier and Tim Dalton, on January 7th, Bucharest proposed that a group of students pool their money so he could buy Hall an AK-47 as a gift. While some students agreed to pursue the endeavor at first - Dreier himself assisted with the collection efforts - reservations arose when Zach pressed hard for the purchase to go through his friend. While it is unclear how this situation came to Hall's attention, this was apparently the last straw. It was one week after the proposal at Paccini that Hall accused Bucharest in class.

Why the classroom theatrics?

Now, from Hall’s perspective, it seemed plausible for him to go around the school administration. The Oregonian reported that Lesch, Hall’s union representative, said that Hall had felt that previous dealings with PSU administration had left him feeling like he couldn’t trust them. The most reasonable explanation is not that Hall is crazy; or that Bucharest is an FBI operative. It seems that Hall just miss-read the situation. And since he didn’t trust the administration, he went about doing what he thought was right for the safety of his students.

In this particular case, the students involved did not feel comfortable going to campus security. Dreier says he was dissuaded from taking the issue to them because of Zach's professed close relationship with certain campus security officials. Hall may very well have been out of line, but he had observed and heard about Bucharest exhibiting suspicious behavior. Hall seemed to read Zach’s attempts at procuring weapons for students as involvement in a governmental operation to out potential agitators for a government agency. And in this particular case,the school administration was not within Hall's nor affected students' circle of trust.

Does faculty need more training to deal with returning vets?

According to Sanford, who is a veteran of the Iraq war, many returning vets feel better with a gun on them. While this may be understandable, it opens up more questions about how the school deals with the various aspects of having a growing student veteran population – especially a population that may have varying levels of PTSD, and has opinions on guns that are not shared by many students and staff at PSU. More and more people are attempting to transition from an existence in a combat zone to ordinary civilian life. What sort of training is necessary for instructors to deal with veterans? Is it possible that Hall did what he did because there aren’t adequate services at PSU to train teachers on how to deal with this new, and very different, veteran population?

According to Jon Sanford, Bucharest is the one of the “most passionate, and hardworking people, who loves economics more than the military—which is saying a lot.". He describes the history of a professional soldier who has given up the only life he knows to pursue economics, activism and public service. If this is true, it is indeed a sad situation for Bucharest to be accused of this by a favorite teacher. But as a member of student government, should Zach Bucharest be more careful of his behavior?

Even assuming that Bucharest is not a danger to anyone, the information that was brought to light by the incident brings up some systemic issues that PSU must deal with. One has to do with the PSU weapons policy. Is the student body comfortable with a member of the student government carrying a gun to school? Assuming that Bucharest does have a carry permit that makes it legal for him to conceal a gun—and even though there is a school policy against carrying a weapon to school—state law does protect his right to arm himself. How does PSU policy work to satisfy both our individual rights and the terms of enrollment? Specifically, when one brings a gun to school, what happens?

Comments

ChipSharde

-3

 

 

Man this sucks. I was trying to take that class and it was full. Now I hear people have dropped just because of this. Dammit people stop screwing up my prerequisite schedule with your elective credits and you guns! Why don't you consider math as an elective instead? If you're America, it's likely you haven't taken enough of it anyway. And if you dropped because of this, you just threw away an easy A.

If you're ever going to buy a gift for your superior, remember to follow the ATF rule: First alcohol, then tobacco. You don't jump straight to firearms. My word. And here I thought the accountants were the ones packing heat, now I have to worry about militant economics people too.

Wednesday 17 February 2010, 06:07

Jharkhand29

0

 

 

There aren't alot of people in America who can share the unique knowledge a military combat soldier possesses. I'm open to learning about different careers especially if I know nothing. Not everyone has the balls to join the army to fight in a foreign country with a different umbrella of cultures. When a person goes abroad to such thing only to come back knowing how to use different weapons and blow people up efficiently it can raise a crowd's eyebrows. People either applaud war veterans or "spit" on them. All I know is that some of our nation's jobs are not the most pleasant.

The funny thing about the "he said, she said" style of presenting information is it doesn't work unless there is sufficient evidence to cite. In Bucharest’s situation with Dr. Hall it must've been pretty hard to deal with the "he said, she said" reaction from students not in the class afterwards. Now, if there was a disabled student with a captioner in the roster then the entire session would've been typed. There's your evidence!

Not all professors like to hear stories about warfare from combat soldiers because academia is a place of friendliness, peace, receptivity and consideration (ideally, not a hard-and-fast rule). Some just want to teach their students without feeling uncomfortable. It takes guts to tell one's student what the issue is. Some professors are used to giving honest opinion on student behavior because they know what it's like to be judged without compassion. If pushed to their limit they will be nasty in class. It's not just a student that can push a professor to his limit. Professors are hardcore researchers because they're hired by organizations or the government to do research. Teaching is part of the job and bringing your other job into the classroom is a blessing in disguise, I guess you can put it that way. It’s humiliating when a professor is negative towards a student during a lecture, though from that something can be learned. There’s something to learn from any situation. Oh, and Bucharest looks hot in his picture :-D.

Wednesday 24 February 2010, 13:36

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