Officials have informed Ohio State student Anthony J. Wunder, 21, that he will be stripped of his full scholarship as a result of his running on to the field in the second quarter of the game between the Buckeyes and the Cincinnati Bearcats. The incident went viral with pictures of assistant Buckeyes coach (and former OSU linebacker) Anthony Schlegel tackling Wunder. It appears that linebackers never truly forget their techniques or training.
Wunder was hauled away by Schlegel and security staff. The mechanical-engineering student is believed to have been inebriated at the time.
He has a rather curious scholarship under the Evans Scholars program for college students who served as golf caddies. I had to check that twice, but that is what is being reported. This scholars programs is for golf caddies? They even live in the “Evans Scholars” house, where Wunder has now moved out from.
A website states
“The Chick Evans Caddie Scholarship is a full tuition and housing college scholarship for golf caddies that is renewable for up to four years. Each year, more than 800 deserving caddies across the country attend college on a four-year scholarship from the Evans Scholars Foundation. Selected applicants must have a strong caddie record, excellent grades, outstanding character and demonstrated financial need.”
Wunder is in his fourth-year student in a five-year engineering program
He faces criminal trespassing, which is a fourth-degree misdemeanor punishable by no more than 30 days in jail. Of course, some faculty have been found to have committed such misdemeanor offenses on campus without serious university discipline.
This stunt will prove costly if Wunder loses both his scholarship and cannot avoid a criminal record, even with a misdemeanor.
Source: Dispatch
Good on you Coach Anthony Schlegel! Teacher of Youth. Molder of men. Former NFLer and muscle head. Slam the drunk kid you outweigh by 20 years and 70 pounds and who helps fund that football team you call a university down to the hard field turf. That’ll get you some weight room cred.
Paul, an employee or school official is considered an agent of the owner of a property for trespass purposes. If the university is private then it is considered private property, if a university is a municipal corporation or state property then it is either the municipality or the state that is considered the property owner and employees of these are considered by common law and statute to be agents because they are trusted by these entities with maintaining control and order of the property in question.
Trespassing is a commonly used charge in these matters because it only matters that the person was in an area that he known, or should have known, that he was not permitted to access. Areas can be designated as off limits by the school or school officials so they are within their right to control access.
This is the reason people who scale bridges and climb onto large cantilevered highway signs and disrupt traffic are charged with trespassing.
Darren – generally I would trust your judgment. However, this is an unusual case. Could you cite some statute from the state or case law to back yourself up. I just do not think an asst coach who is not supposed to be on the field is supposed to go on the field to tackle anyone.
Paul. Here is one example of a statutory permission to use reasonable force to evict or detain a trespasser.
http://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=9A.16.020
Darren – thanks for the link. However, I fail to see one that fits the bill in this case.
I assume you’re referring to RCW 9A.16.020
Use of force — When lawful.
“The use, attempt, or offer to use force upon or toward the person of another is not unlawful in the following cases: . . .
(3) Whenever used by a party about to be injured, or by another lawfully aiding him or her, in preventing or attempting to prevent an offense against his or her person, or a malicious trespass,”
In fact, no one was about to be injured (unless you’re talking about Caddie being flattened by Schlegel), so subsection (3) is a loser in the courtroom.
Subsection (4)? ” (4) Whenever reasonably used by a person to detain someone who enters or remains unlawfully in a building or on real property lawfully in the possession of such person, so long as such detention is reasonable in duration and manner to investigate the reason for the detained person’s presence on the premises, and so long as the premises in question did not reasonably appear to be intended to be open to members of the public”.
Was the field lawfully in the possession of Anthony Schlegel, even by agency? I don’t think so. Was Schlegel investigating the reason for Caddie’s presence? I don’t think so. This one’s a loser unless Johnny Cochran’s prosecuting.
Horsehockey from the lapel-flagpin crowd.
Groen
Stevegroen,
Any employee as far as trespassing is concerned under that Washington state’s law has the authority to declare that another person is trespassing from a property for which they are an employee. That is exactly the same as a restaurant employee (who is not the business owner but is an agent of that owner) evicting a person who remains unlawfully within the building or on the property. That provision has been in place in the state law for decades, likely going back to at least 1909 upon the adoption of the Revised Code of Washington. The only argument that could be raised is that the employee, by company policy, does not have the authority to prosecute a trespass. If that was the case it would be up to the trier of law to decide the issue as far as the apprehension of the student by the coach. I have never seen this happen in the real world however.
Furthermore, we can look at it from a defense point of view, which as I mentioned earlier the Use of reasonable Force is part of the Defenses part of the WA Criminal Code. When one looks at the defenses to trespass under the Chapter 9A.56 RCW the following elements are applicable:
Under Definitions of the Burglary and Trespass statute, RCW 9A.56.10:
(5) “Enters or remains unlawfully.” A person “enters or remains unlawfully” in or upon premises when he or she is not then licensed, invited, or otherwise privileged to so enter or remain.
A license or privilege to enter or remain in a building which is only partly open to the public is not a license or privilege to enter or remain in that part of a building which is not open to the public. A person who enters or remains upon unimproved and apparently unused land, which is neither fenced nor otherwise enclosed in a manner designed to exclude intruders, does so with license and privilege unless notice against trespass is personally communicated to him or her by the owner of the land or some other authorized person, or unless notice is given by posting in a conspicuous manner. Land that is used for commercial aquaculture or for growing an agricultural crop or crops, other than timber, is not unimproved and apparently unused land if a crop or any other sign of cultivation is clearly visible or if notice is given by posting in a conspicuous manner. Similarly, a field fenced in any manner is not unimproved and apparently unused land. A license or privilege to enter or remain on improved and apparently used land that is open to the public at particular times, which is neither fenced nor otherwise enclosed in a manner to exclude intruders, is not a license or privilege to enter or remain on the land at other times if notice of prohibited times of entry is posted in a conspicuous manner.
(6) “Premises” includes any building, dwelling, structure used for commercial aquaculture, or any real property.
The stadium could either, for purposes of the trespass statute, could be considered a building or improved land.
Furthermore, the student cannot articulate that he as a spectator had license to enter the field and disrupt the game. In addition to the trespassing it could also be argued as being Disorderly Conduct for interrupting a lawful assembly or event. Which would add further evidence of the crime of trespass was committed because any reasonable person knows not to jump onto the playfield and disrupt the game.
Back onto defenses, (from the student’s perspective)
RCW 9A.52.090
it is a defense that:
(1) A building involved in an offense under RCW 9A.52.070 was abandoned; or
(2) The premises were at the time open to members of the public and the actor complied with all lawful conditions imposed on access to or remaining in the premises; or
(3) The actor reasonably believed that the owner of the premises, or other person empowered to license access thereto, would have licensed him or her to enter or remain; or
Where the student did not have any reasonable expectation that he was allowed to enter the playfield his action is considered trespassing for the purpose of the law. The statute provides the authority to use reasonable force to detain him and the law also provides the coach as having agency to declare a person a trespasser or the game field as an off limits area. I could go on and dig up the law on official authority of a secondary or primary school agent to provide trespassing authority, but I have explained this sufficiently given the time I have .
As for whether or not the assistant coach used reasonable force, that is up to a trier of fact or law.
Darren – Thanks for your response. I’m still a little confused here, even after reading your thoughtful post. I missed in the above argument where it says that an employee, other than a state-licensed LEO with property jurisdiction can use reasonable force to apprehend a trespasser. Could you point out where it says anything to that effect for me? I’d really appreciate it.
Darren – the way I am reading the statute they both trespassed and the asst coach assaulted him. If I am the kid, I sue the coach for damages commensurate with my loss of scholarship and any physical damage he did to my person. Also for punitive damages for the body slam. I would include the university and head coach for lack of supervision of the asst coach.
American states are going to have to begin competing with China in math and science. We can probably beat China at football but the future of world business does not hinge on football. Look what Penn State did to cover up its pedophile coach as if he was a pedophile priest.
Kids run on to the field all the time at the end of games without any consequences. He should fight this on those grounds
Darren – he should fight it on gender grounds. There is new scientific evidence that young males do stupid things. The asst. coach is neither an owner or an agent of the owner. Personally, I would say he would have no defense in this matter. He is not allowed on the field during the game. Officials or the cops they have stationed around could have taken the matter in hand. They would have been covered. And I am not sure trespassing is the right charge. As a student, can he trespass on the football field? At least they did not hit him with resisting arrest and shot him.
Clearly disproportionate. The crime was: not violent, not destructive and it wasn’t a crime involving moral turpitude (like fraud). It was disruptive of course, but weighing that against the amount of time spent to obtain the scholarship and the punishment levied is disproportionate.
Squeaky: Good poem, quite a talent you have there. Hope you keep a journal of your poems .
Justice Holmes,
I agree with you. I think the kid should have been put on probation and cooled off in the slammer for a few days with the warning that any such action in the future would result in him paying his own way. Can’t you just see him go into action at Muirfield or some other golf tournament? With reactions like that, he looks like a real time bomb.
I never knew faculty tackling a student committing a misdemeanor wasn’t a battery beyond the scope of Anthony Schlegal’s job description. Wunders and Schlegals never cease.
stevegroen – I still think tackling the student is assault and battery. You are allowed to use as much force as is used against you. There is no self-defense here and the coach is not charged with protecting the field.
Paul, in most states citizens can use reasonable force to evict a trespasser from property they own or are agents of the owners. The student was charged with trespassing so the coach would have an affirmative defense in tackling the student.
I disagree with the idea that force can be used to eject a trespasser to public or private property, whether or not an assistant coach is an agent of the school for such a purpose and even if trespass is the appropriate charge. I haven’t looked at the issue since I took the bar, but I can’t remember any defense to trespass even remotely similar. Citizen’s arrest as a defense? No way. Remember the People’s Court’s “Don’t take the law into your own hands, you take ’em to court”? Football or god, corps, and country patriot or not, Schlegal overstepped his authority. The problem is his celebrity at the school would give him a favorable verdict in the court of public opinion, and the county prosecutor and a civil jury would be persuaded as usual to sweep it under the rug were criminal or civil liability pursued. Schlegal’s a little like Uncle Rico Dynamite, always dreaming of what he could do if only he could still play.
I have been saying for a long time our schools are run by idiots. This was due to 5-year-old charged with sexual harassment, girl takes knife away from friend cutting herself and gives to teacher and is expelled, boy expelled because a pastry looked like a gun, etc. The idiots are now in colleges. Some form of punishment, yes. But take a scholarship away, especially from a good student? Idiocy or stupidity? Both and a whole lot more!
more likely the number of alumni who needed caddies while in town.
I wonder if the caddie scholarship began from so many kids who caddied to save money for school.
Wait, they have enough caddie scholars that they have an entire dorm?
I view this as a silly prank that should not cost him his education. Young people do this kind of thing all the time, and he wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. Reprimanded, yes. Warned, yes. But kicked out of school? Absurd overreaction. It’s been rightly pointed out that football players get away with worse.
If they can treat sexual assault like an academic infraction, then certainly this can be handled by OSU’s kangaroo court.
Paul, sometimes women do stupid, too.
That’s a ton of money in that Evans Scholarship. If a year of college tuition and housing runs $30-40,000 * 800 scholarships, that equals something like $24-32 million per year. To generate that amount of income, you’d probably need something like $500 million in principal. That’s larger than the endowment of many colleges.
Flag football.
nick, rofl. You got that wrong. Women are used to men doing stupid and sometimes we laugh about it.
Paul, I think you’re thinking w/ your 70’s brain. PC and women’s studies folk have taken over the universities, streaking is an affront to women. It’s pornographic and is not funny, but violence against women.
nick and bettykath – the only time I saw someone streak it was a woman. 🙂
Seamus…one of my favorite scenes. And: “Get Niedermeyer to do it. He’s a sneaky little s&*t, too.” Double secret probation is an oft-quoted snark line among friends.
DBQ, We went to a Phillies Home Opener w/ a busload of guys back during the streaking era of the 70’s. A drunken a-hole in our group streaked, and we all had to kick in $’s to bail the idiot out of jail. I and others voted we let him sit in jail, but we were outvoted.