| During my junior year at UCONN I occasionally ate lunch with a certain student whose name I won’t reveal at this time I’ll just call him student 1. Student 1 made an effort to befriend me and with the level of hostility I often experienced in the Landscape Architecture Program it was welcome. We were both close in age and he claimed to understand the feeling of being isolated in the program. After having lunch a few times I felt comfortable enough to broach the subject of racism in the program. Student 1 saw it as well, however kept any discussion about this subject brief. He acknowledged incidents and people including professor Alexopoulos, but would try to move on to subjects like projects in class or the subject he was known for - partying. This continued junior year during which time he would distance himself from me then try to befriend me again repeatedly. Despite this odd behavior his acknowledgement served as somewhat of a boost as it confirmed what I saw. Senior year the negative behavior in relation to me intensified. I brought up the possibility of a lawsuit against the school when talking with student 1 again if the behavior did not change. His responses would start off by agreeing with me that it was happening but he would always steer the conversation towards convincing me it was futile as UCONN had money, clout, Nike endorsements and found ways to prevail in such matters. Junior year his attitude towards me had been moody, and sometimes he participated in the harassment. Senior year this trend on the part of student 1 not only continued but increased. We still went to lunch, but much less often. He would get terse and crabby with me out of nowhere. At times he would simply ignore me and not talk to me at all. We had no falling out, no argument to speak of and rarely disagreed. I didn’t understand and it did have a slightly confusing effect on me. He had a lot on his plate, but in the end it was his problem not mine as my job was getting my degree. Whenever I changed tones with him and just ignored him he would then try to smooth things over with me to get close to me again. He had been one of the few people in the class to occasionally lend me a hand if I needed information or a second opinion so I often had no choice but to relent. Once senior year while at lunch with student 1 after I brought up the subject of my intentions to sue and his repeated attempts to convince me to change my mind flopped he revealed he was an undercover law enforcement agent. He didn’t say which branch and I didn’t ask as I was a bit surprised. He revealed that another student in the program and my graduating class, who I’ll refer to as student 2, was an undercover agent as well. He indicated that he would no longer be working on college campuses, but that student 2 would and if I went forward with my allegations she could be exposed and so could he. I don’t know why he decided to impart this except to say it must have been an act of desperation. Undercover agents don’t usually reveal themselves as far as I know except in James Bond movies. But it did make sense given the strange behavior I had often witnessed being displayed by the two of them and the surreal atmosphere in the program. It did nothing to endear them to me as these were US government employees after all – my government. It did bolster rumors about another student who was allegedly a private detective or something of the like and one other student I’ll call student 3 at this point, who it was hinted at was there for security purposes as well. After thinking about it one thing that made sense about his revelation was the fact that conversations I had with people outside of school and the program (especially over the phone) such as with my girlfriend kept finding their way back to me via the Landscape Architecture Program. I had no association with anyone from the program outside of the school setting. I had twice hung out with student 1 outside of the UCONN setting in the three years I had known him and never with any of the other students. There were no connections between the people I spent time with outside of school which was a short list and those within the University of Connecticut. There was another incident as well. While at UCONN I was a dj at
a college radio station in Hartford, Ct. I spun music there and
usually had the time slot of Saturday nights from 8–10PM or 10-12PM
typically. As my time
there went on I noticed another dj who would walk up and strike up
conversations out of nowhere seeming to be working extra hard at
getting to know me or endear himself to me. This in and of itself is innocuous
and not particularly strange especially when taken by itself. However, there were strange patterns which
began to emerge during my senior year at UCONN while I was at the
radio station in school but at the radio station as well. While on summer
break between my senior and junior year this other dj we’ll call
Kadeem would show up before my time slot of 10PM to 12PM. He would actually be there
in the management office (only managers were allowed into this
office although he wasn’t a manager) before I arrived, meaning
before 9:45PM, by himself on the management computer. He would come into the dj
booth where I was and constantly attempt to strike up conversations
with me. I would oblige
and eventually we began talking on a regular basis.
He told me he was a rapper and was a dj only
to make connections and network through the radio station. I thought it was odd that he
immediately was asking me about making music which I used to do and
trying to get me to do it again. I began giving him rides
home from the radio station as it seemed we had a lot in common and
to talk about. I didn’t
recognize it at the time but it was a little too much in common –
just a little too perfect. He worked hard at befriending me and it
worked he got me doing music again and all that was good. Once the semester started up
again I would mention my problems at school occasionally and he
seemed to understand claiming to have experienced similar things
while he was a student at Trinity College in Hartford, Ct. In short we talked quite a
bit and that all seemed fine. Things got strange when bits and pieces of
conversations I had with him started getting back to me through
student 1 or other people at UCONN. There was no link between
them and in fact once I asked student 1 if he knew Kadeem from the
radio station and he flatly said “no.“ After this student 2 would
walk past my desk on her way out of the classroom sometimes look ad
me with a smirk and say “Kadeem”(she would use his actual name) out
loud as she left the room. This was odd but as I was starting to suspect student 1 and 2 of being in law enforcement already I just brushed it off as coincidental somehow. Soon Kadeem began increasingly pushing me on music making insinuating at times and even coming out and saying I should just drop out of school and pursue music making Hip Hop beats. This was very hard to fathom as he always talked about how education was so important for minorities, as he himself was half white half black and had attained his degree in computer science from Trinity College. He knew how tough and almost impossible it was to break into the music industry as a steady source of income. It’s not as if I was not working or was showing signs of wanting to quit despite how hostile the environment at UCONN. He also knew I stopped doing music because of it's unreliable nature and was pursuing a degree in landscape architecture for the exact opposite reason. I remembered the words of another graduate of
Trinity College whom I knew in my past who referred to Trinity as “a
hotbed for CIA recruitment” and I was really starting to wonder
about Kadeem. Things
were getting stranger and stranger including the revelation that he
had two computers at his home which were fully functional and
connected to the internet when he was showing up early for his radio
slot using the computer in the management office.
He said he needed to use the internet when I
first met him. Then
later I casually asked him if he had internet service at home at the
time and he said “yes.” What’s stranger is he had a wife and two
children at home and he was a dutiful husband and parent. I asked him about it and he
got flustered, said he didn’t remember and quickly changed the
subject. I began
thinking about how he would k now things about me before I said them
and it was all a little too weird.
I decided to put it to a test. I spun a deep house show and
he did a positive hip hop show after mine. He always talked about a
positive rapper named KRS1 who headed the Temple of Hip Hop and how
he wanted to join that organization. I decided I would play a
song as an intro to his show from mine. I selected a song called
“Black Cop” by KRS1 which Kadeem told me he liked. The song was about how in
KRS1’s view sometimes African American cops could be more crooked
and corrupt than other crooked cops to try and prove
themselves. I wanted to
see what Kadeem’s reaction would be. If he were just a regular person his reaction
should have been to do what he always did and come on the microphone
between our shows and have a little conversation with me like
usual. He claimed to
love KRS1 so there should be no problem with the song or the
views. If there were he
could simply ask me to use another song, although it would have been
strange, he had that option as we knew each other and had a
rapport. Instead his face turned white when I played
it. He could not make
eye contact with me and he began acting nervous. This stayed that way with
each passing week until finally he began consistently showing up
late, then later then just plain missing his shows. So he went from showing up
over two hours before his show to not showing up at all. He would not answer my phone
calls or anything. Very
strange behavior indeed.
It all could have been marked up to just a
string of coincidences and explained through other means of
course. However there
was one key thing which brought it full circle and tied it into
UCONN. By the end of
senior year I did not have much of a social life at all I hung out
with one main friend outside of school, had broken up with my
girlfriend and socialized at the radio station and school. That was all I had time
for. We had projects
which kept us up all night and that was landscape architecture
classes alone, not to mention others.
So on the weekends I was with my best friend
if I was doing anything outside of schoolwork at all. He was
not affiliated with UCONN nor with student 1 who I in fact asked and
would obviously know about.
More
often than not I was doing homework at home and no longer went to
school in the landscape architecture studios on the weekends because
of the treatment I might get depending on who was there. If not that I was at the
radio station doing my usual slot and no one from UCONN could even
get that station unless online and nobody was listening to the music
I played except me in the class which I had confirmed through many
conversations with my classmates during junior and sophomore
years.
One day while struggling with some final
touches on my last design project for senior landscape
architecture design class I needed a second opinion and decided to
call student 1 to ask his opinion. We had become very distant
at this point and barely talked, but that week he had asked my
opinion on something so I hoped he would return the favor. I called
him up and he gave me his answer and before he hung up said in an angry and terse
manner, “and stop snitching on Saturdays!!” He then said, "you hear me?" I responded,
"yeah" to which he responded, "good!!" and hung up.
There was only one thing I was doing on Saturdays which could be construed as snitching. That was playing that song between my show and Kadeem’s. A song Kadeem and I had both talked about and which he told me he enjoyed and was in line with my views on. Student 1 and had had no connection outside of the school and did not talk on the weekends except by phone occasionally for help on projects. Student 1 was a big time party
animal and heavily involved in his fraternity that way on weekends.
He knew no one I did outside of school and that was really one
person my best friend who he admitted to not knowing. He admitted to not listening
to my radio show and to not knowing Kadeem. Playing that song
was all that could be considerd snitching and thus
he confirmed it was an issue thereby admitting a connection to
Kadeem and that Kadeem was law enforcement. This of
course only cemented his revelation about himself and student
2.
I have no proof to display right now. One might accuse me of looking for conspiracies, but remember this; there was a student in the junior class when I was a senior who was a Connecticut State Trooper. Not only did people mention this, but he would actually drive to school in his patrol car and often had on his uniform having just come from work. My belief is he was nothing more than a person changing careers. He was employed as a state trooper and was getting a degree in something else for whatever reasons. There’s nothing more to it than that in my view. There was a student in the class ahead of mine named What was this all about? If any law enforcement agency had been following my life since my youthful indiscretions they would know I was not a terrorist. I stopped associating with the college students involved in the protests of my teenage years at the time we were arrested and was no longer politically active outside of voting, and by that I mean actually voting not campaigning or anything of the like. Yet at least two law enforcement agents paid with taxpayer dollars were not only watching me, but occasionally participating in the harassment. I learned Santa Claus doesn’t exist a long time ago, but something is un-American in this scenario. The behavior never felt in the best interests of the campus and to the contrary felt reckless, dangerous and often like entrapment. It would have been safer on their part to have just denied my application if I was such a threat and they could have saved dollars needed to fight post 9/11 terror and terrorists. The agent’s energies and time could have been served stopping real terrorists instead of provoking American citizens who are obviously changing their lives for the better, and had even previously cooperated with them. Is this what people in the government believe cooperating with law enforcement entitles one to and who has knowledge of such set ups? These are the kinds of things we accuse dictators and corrupt regimes in other countries of doing. None of this bodes well for post 9/11 national security and is scary as I was actually harassed and provoked in front of them and sometimes by them and nothing was done to stop the behavior. I have no idea if the professors found out through them or not, but there are serious ethical questions here which deserve to be addressed. The school’s “internal investigation” swept it under the rug. Now my country, America, doesn’t seem as free as it once did to me. I only hope this isn’t happening to others. More To Come |
Justin Quinn to contact me, please click here