Howard “Buddy” Beck was indefinitely trespassed for placing a sticker on a parking sign in front of Tillman Hall
Byline: Chase Duncan, Guest Writer
Rock Hill socialist community activist Howard “Buddy” Beck has been trespassed indefinitely from Winthrop’s campus after being charged with graffiti vandalism for placing a sticker on parking signs in front of Tillman Hall.
Many students at Winthrop might not recognize him by name, but Beck has been a familiar face at Winthrop for the past several years as a tabling vendor inside the DiGiorgio Campus Center, where he would sell Marxist literature and merchandise to students. He also served as a third-party advisor to the now-defunct WU Socialist Student Union.
Beck said he was protesting the deportation of Mahmoud Khalil on Oakland Avenue in front of Congressman Ralph Norman’s office on March 24, when he walked onto campus to use the restroom. On the way, he placed a sticker that said “Sick of capitalism? Join the communists!” on the back of a traffic sign.
“I put a sticker on the backside of a stop sign, then I continued onto Bancroft Hall,” Beck said. “Then I went to the bathroom and came back [to Oakland Avenue]. I was walking across campus and then three police cars came around me and told me that because I put that sticker on the stop sign, I was involved in vandalism.”
The incident report for Beck’s arrest states that the Winthrop University Police Department (WUPD) was notified by someone in the President’s Office that someone was seen vandalizing a parking sign in front of Tillman Hall. The witness kept view of Beck as he passed by Tillman and Margaret Nance and entered Bancroft Hall.
“They took me and put me in a police car for about an hour, and finally they had me sign this form that said I was barred from campus for life,” Beck said.
Beck was issued a citation for illegal graffiti vandalism and a $50 fee for the damage to the sign.
WUPD Chief of Police Charles Yearta said the charges against Beck were simply a part of the standard legal protocol for incidents involving vandalism, which would include anyone placing stickers on signs on Winthrop campus without permission from the school.
“The Glen the Frog stickers, the cat stickers, those are still crimes, if they’re on our property,” Yearta said. “If they’re on our property, no one has given permission for anybody to stick those on signs that belong to Winthrop. Anytime that is done, that is an act of vandalism.”
Yearta said that the only difference between those acts and what Beck did is that the President’s Office spotted him placing the sticker on the sign and called WUPD, which gave them legal cause to charge Beck with vandalism.
Yearta said that Beck’s indefinite trespass ban from Winthrop is the “industry standard” for trespassing at similar institutions and is added onto any criminal charge on Winthrop campus that is not a non-violent traffic violation.
“It used to be that those were done at [the length] of a year,” Yearta said. “They are almost always indefinite now. We’ll only do a year if a juvenile is involved due to the way the South Carolina law is.”
Yearta said stickers and other forms of graffiti vandalism are removed by work orders through Facilities Management. The remaining stickers on campus from other persons and businesses are there because there hasn’t been a work order put in or because they are busy with other responsibilities.
Beck said that there’s a nationwide issue at college institutions that surrounds protest movements and the people that participate in them, beyond the issue of his own personal trespass from Winthrop University.
“I don’t think it’s me so much as there’s this alternative, revolutionary perspective that needs to be brought to students because right now what you have across the country is a reactionary perspective,” Beck said. “And what kind of education are students gonna have if the only perspective they’re allowed to have on campus is the perspective of the prevailing administration of the university and the prevailing administration of the country?”