Discussion List for campus-based and allied personnel working to end gender-based violence on campus.

I think Wendy's statement that students have no due process rights might 
mislead a lot of folks. Rather than jumping into the FERPA discussion, I just 
want to clear up that one legal point. Students definitely do have some due 
process rights. In fact, the Supreme Court decision requiring that students a 
disciplinary hearing system was a due process case. It came out the civil 
rights struggles and arose in the context of two black university students 
being summarily expelled because there had been a civil rights demonstration 
(that they probably never even attended.) In law school one of the first 
things they teach you is that due process means notice and an opportunity to 
be heard. I'm about as prosecution-oriented as anyone but I don't have a 
problem with giving that to accused students. I think some very bad 
pro-abusive-student decisions have come down because those very basic 
principles were ignored. For example, if an accused student has not been 
allowed to call witnesses (and I mean actual witnesses not a string of 
character witnesses) whatever other points his lawyer raises on appeal are 
given more weight because the school's procedures are already questionable. 
FERPA has a tendency to complicate and confuse everyone, which makes it 
doubly important not to ignore the more basic legal principles that apply.

Alice Vachss