The Carolina Student’s Guide to the Law
Carolina Student Legal Services provides free legal representation and advice to Carolina students. Source: Carolina Union Website
The Carolina Political Review sat down with Carolina Student Legal Services Director and Staff Attorney Fran Muse in addition to the Executive Director of Off-Campus Student Life and Community Partnerships Aaron Bachenheimer to learn about ways that Carolina students can ensure that they stay on the right side of the law during their time in Chapel Hill.
Alcohol violations are something that Carolina Student Legal Services deals with regularly. The first thing to know about alcohol infractions is the law surrounding open containers. “UNC students often don’t realize that walking around with an open container, whether you’re 19 or 21, is illegal,” said Ms. Muse. An open container is any alcoholic beverage with the seal opened. This could include a beer can with the tab popped or any alcoholic drink transferred to another container. In Chapel Hill, it is a misdemeanor for anyone over 21 to possess an open container in public. In North Carolina broadly, it is a Class 3 misdemeanor for anyone who is 19 or 20-years old to possess any amount of alcohol and a Class 1 misdemeanor for anyone 18 or under, regardless of the state of the container. An officer may stop someone who they believe is under the influence even if they have no alcohol on their person.
“What a lot of students don’t understand,” Ms. Muse said, “is underage consumption is illegal. Your body is a container, and if a police officer can see that you are visibly impaired and determines that you are underage, you can be charged with underage consumption even though you don’t have any [alcohol] in your hand.”
If a police officer stops someone on the street and believes that they might be under the influence of alcohol and underage, they are empowered by the law to administer an alcohol screening test, often in the form of an Alco-Sensor. It is important to know that one can refuse this test. However, refusal to take an alcohol screening test is information that can be used against a defendant in court.
Another area of law pertinent to many college students is that surrounding fake IDs. Carolina Student Legal Services heavily discourages students from obtaining false identification cards in part because of the long-term negative repercussions that arise from being caught with one.
“Businesses don’t want to hire someone that has pretended to be someone else. It doesn’t matter that they were a 19-year-old college student at the time,” said Ms. Muse.
Possessing a fake ID is a crime of fraud that usually carries a Class 1 misdemeanor charge. However, in some jurisdictions the crime can carry a felony charge, further contributing to Carolina Student Legal Service’s strong advice against obtaining a fake ID.
Many students also wonder about the laws regarding cannabis. Marijuana is a Schedule VI controlled substance under NC law, and thus the action of knowingly possessing the drug can range from a Class 3 misdemeanor to a Class 1 felony, depending on the quantity. Possessing less than one-half ounce of marijuana is a Class 3 misdemeanor, possessing between one-half and one and a half ounces of marijuana is a Class 1 misdemeanor, and the possession of any quantity over one and a half ounces is a felony. Additionally, possessing marijuana paraphernalia is a Class 1 misdemeanor. Paraphernalia is defined essentially as anything used to grow, prepare, or consume marijuana. However, an interesting quirk of the law surrounding marijuana is that it is only illegal to possess the drug, not to consume it. This means that it is not illegal to be under the influence of cannabis in public, as long as the user has none on their person and is not driving a vehicle.
One last statute that students often find themselves in violation of is that regarding nuisance noises. Noises that fall under the purview of nuisance noise include loud parties, yelling, and sound coming from exterior loudspeakers. In keeping with the Town of Chapel Hill’s recent push to decriminalize many legal violations that formerly carried the possibility of jail time, the Town Council changed the penalty for a nuisance noise violation from a misdemeanor to a fine. However, officers quickly noticed that they were unable to stop loud parties by threatening the hosts with a fine, so the Town amended the ordinance yet again to give police more discretion in issuing this charge.
Now, responding officers have the choice to issue a fine or a misdemeanor charge when dealing with those in violation of the nuisance noise ordinance. Dr. Bachenheimer says that generally, businesses and organizations face a civil penalty while private residences are handled through criminal citations. While it may seem counterintuitive to issue a more severe penalty to a resident, Dr. Bachenheimer says that this allows the police officer to divert individuals through the Orange County Pre-Arrest Diversion Program, a program for first time offenders that allows them to avoid a criminal charge on their record in exchange for their completion of educational training.
One way for students to avoid nuisance noise charges is by registering their parties through the “Party Police Free” party registration system. In following up with students after their parties had been shut down by police for violating the noise ordinance, Dr. Bachenheimer found that students needed a resource to alert them when their party was getting out of hand before the police arrived. To fulfill this need, the office of Off-Campus Student Life partnered with the Town of Chapel Hill and the Chapel Hill Police Department to create a party registration system that allows the police to notify hosts if their party is reported by neighbors, after which they have twenty minutes to address the complaint before an officer is dispatched.
The program has been extremely successful since its inception in 2018. Dr. Bachenheimer says that of the nearly 100 parties registered each semester, only a handful even generate a complaint. His office believes that this is thanks to the 15 minute meeting that students must attend to register a party on the site, which equips hosts with tools to keep their parties under control. That meeting is only required once in order to gain access to the party registration site and allows users to register as many events as they wish afterward.
It is also important for Carolina students to understand best practices for interacting with the police, Carolina Student Legal Services says.
“We tell students that they don’t have to answer officers’ questions such as ‘Have you been drinking?’ or ‘Do you have a fake ID?’. However, we always tell students to be polite and respectful to police officers,” Ms. Muse said.
This approach not only increases the chances for a peaceful encounter with the police, but may also contribute to a better outcome for the person interacting with the officer. Ms. Muse also advises students not to lie to the police, rather, she tells them to invoke their right to not answer the question. She reassures students that they do not have to interact with an officer unless they are being detained. If a student is unclear if they are currently being detained, Ms. Muse says the best way to find out is simply to ask, “Officer, am I free to go?” If a student asks if they are free to go and the officer has no reasonable suspicion to detain them, then they must let the student leave. However, if after detaining a student the officer’s reasonable suspicion turns to probable cause, then they may initiate an arrest. It is however much more common for students to receive a formal citation for violations like public intoxication than to be arrested.
Similarly, if a police officer asks for consent to search a student’s property, then that student has a right to refuse the search. The officer may be able to initiate a search on other grounds, but if they are asking for consent, the person has a right to refuse.
As mentioned earlier, the new Orange County Pre-Arrest Diversion Program, or OC-PAD, is another program important for Carolina students to understand. Started in February 2019, OC-PAD affords local law enforcement officers the ability to divert first time offenders who commit an eligible misdemeanor into an educational program instead of the court system. Carolina Student Legal Services has already noticed positive effects from the program for all stakeholders. UNC benefits from the program because an OC-PAD referral leads to early intervention and educational programming for students, the Orange County criminal justice system has benefited from the decrease in misdemeanor cases clogging up local courts, and students have benefited from avoiding a criminal charge and subsequent public record of their offense.
For questions about the laws discussed in this article, readers are encouraged to reach out to Carolina Student Legal Services. Although located on campus, the firm does not work for UNC. Their services are available at no cost to Carolina students, as a small portion of student fees go toward funding the firm. Ms. Muse and her colleagues have confidentially aided countless students with legal troubles, and they continue to be one of the most effective resources that UNC students have at their disposal for dealing with the law.