A male undergraduate student was rushed to Rhode Island Hospital yesterday with severe spinal injuries after friends launched him from an improvised catapult outside University Hall during an unscheduled meeting of the Corporation.
The student, Trevor Demers '11, lost consciousness upon colliding with the brick face of the historic building, authorities said, and will likely face partial or full paralysis from the neck down.
A member of the group Students for a Democratic Society, Demers was reportedly trying to make his way through a window and into the third-floor room where the University's highest governing body was meeting. Members of the same activist student group tried to forcibly enter University Hall during a meeting of the Corporation in October.
According to a police report, about 14 students gathered on the Main Green around 9:15 a.m. Tuesday wheeling a "catapult-like machine" and banging drums. After a brief theatrical performance, in which students acted out "old white men crushing the dreams of young people," they positioned Demers in the catapult's basket.
Providence Chief of Police Dean Esserman described the device that launched Demers as "a dangerous weapon that should never have been used to propel a human being."
The device was aimed at a third-floor window in University Hall, the police report said, but the students misfired and propelled Demers into the brick face of the building just left of the window.
In a press conference early Tuesday evening, President Ruth Simmons expressed her "deep regret" at Demers' injuries. "This is a terrible day for the University," she said. "Our prayers are with Trevor."
The student's father, Bill Demers, also appeared at the press conference. Overcome with grief, he spoke about his son's "two greatest loves - institutional transparency, and flying."
Members of SDS appeared to have built the launching device, Esserman said, out of "rotting wood, fallen branches and some industrial materials - all recycled."
"We wanted to stand up to those pigs without compromising our principles," said an SDS member who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "In hindsight, fabricated parts might have been worth the small scrape on Mother Nature's knee."
Chancellor Thomas Tisch '76, who was leading a meeting of the Corporation's budget and finance committee inside the building, called the accident "a great tragedy - not least because we never got to hear what he had to say."
The impact of Demers hitting the building sounded like "a big smack," he added.
Trustee John MacDonald '67 said the meeting concluded with a resolution to prevent further impact-related disturbances by installing sound-proofing material behind the building's drywall. "We cannot have our meetings disrupted like this," he said.
MacDonald said the committee was discussing plans "to cut off the heat to dorms to free up money for our gold-plated toilets" at the time of the incident.
"There was just this awful noise, like someone was crushing a child's skull to scoop out his brains for a stew," he said. "But that's another project."
