lxxxii
2.7.08
published on 02/03/06
This Week at Vassar in 1979
Emma Epstein 
Assistant Life Editor
Postal Inspector Daniel Mikalko arrested Vassar student and Gambian native Bala Jahumpa ’80 on the evening of Dec. 13, 1979 outside of the All Campus Dining Center for mail theft. According to federal agents, the arrest was prompted by more than 200 accounts of misplaced campus mail. Jahumpa’s preliminary hearing, scheduled for Jan. 4, 1980, was cancelled in order to bring the case before a grand jury. The Black Caucus of the Faculty and Administration and protested Jahumpa’s arrest. In Jahumpa’s account to The Miscellany News published on Jan. 25, 1980, he claimed that the agents took him to a jail in New York City before officially arresting him, searched his bag without a warrant, and mockingly accused him of stealing money to buy clothes. Jahumpa also claimed that they seized writings of Mao Tse Tung and Karl Marx from his room in Noyes House without recording them on the official list of items confiscated. Mikalko denied all of these claims.
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