Charlie Perry first came to meet me on Good Friday. Many students had already left for the Easter weekend, and the town was quiet.

He was wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt because it was, of course, still cold in State College.

"You going home this weekend?" I asked, just to make conversation.

He shook his head slowly.

"I need to find a ride to Rutgers," he said. "But nobody is going. The team is playing there and my whole family is going to go and watch my brother play.'

Perry was ineligible to travel with the team and ineligible to play his redshirt junior season after being found in violation of item 14.03 of the Code of Conduct -- Disorderly Conduct.

Judicial Affairs concluded after a hearing that for yelling outside a bar Perry should be suspended until the end of fall 2003. Also included in the ruling was this statement: "As a result of the deferred expulsion, Mr. Perry will not be permitted to engage in any extracurricular activity of the University, including any sports programs, through Fall Semester 2003."

That ruling came on Feb. 26, less than two months after Anwar Phillips played in the Capital One Bowl game even though Judicial Affairs had decided on Dec. 12 to suspend him two semesters for accepting responsibility for the sexual assault of a woman in her on-campus apartment.

But Phillips' suspension didn't begin until the beginning of the spring 2003 semester so that he could finish his fall endeavors -- both academic and athletic.

And oh, by the way, when Judicial Affairs said "two-semester expulsion" it meant the spring and the summer, so Phillips could, completely coincidentally, return for the fall football season.

This thing known as Judicial Affairs is a mystery, and purposefully so. It revels in the fact that it doesn't have to tell anybody anything, and then uses silence to justify giving a similar penalty to a potential sex offender as it would to someone who yells outside a bar.

I'm still waiting for Mr. Joseph Puzycki, the director of Judicial Affairs, to return any of my five phone calls. But that was more a formality than anything because he would probably have responded to my questions with the fallback phrases like, "Every case is decided on an individual basis," or "We cannot discuss the specifics of that case because of legal issues."

Message to Mr. Puzycki, and the rest of Judicial Affairs: As long as you continue to have an impact on the lives of Penn State students, the Daily Collegian will be here to question and interpret your actions. It is our duty to explain things to readers, especially confusing and frightening governing bodies with as much power as your own. Judicial Affairs is an arcane, antiquated and authoritarian body with unreasonable clout and not enough checks or balances.

Regardless of all this legal gab and the facts of the two cases and all that, which could be debated for months, there is this: Anwar Phillips was suspended two semesters but allowed to play his sport until that suspension began.

His violation of the Code of Conduct was sexual assault.

Charlie Perry was suspended two semesters and not allowed to play his sport while waiting for the suspension to begin.

His violation was disorderly conduct. Nothing can justify that.

Perry was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He has a two-inch thick folder with all the documents he has saved from his case. He truly believes he is innocent.

He doesn't have much to say about Anwar Phillips.

"They let him go to Florida, to play in the game, right?" he asks.

I nod my head.

"I wonder what the girl did," he said. "I wonder if she finished her semester."