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There's quite a bit more in the story, such as this from an alumni attorney helping students anonymously accused of cheating on an exam: The students knew Otti
by bgentry 4y ago
There's quite a bit more in the story, such as this from an alumni attorney helping students anonymously accused of cheating on an exam:
The students knew Ottilie ran his own law practice and reached out for his counsel. Ottilie agreed to take the students’ case pro bono and worked with two other alumni lawyers on their defense—recreating seating charts and finding over a dozen witnesses who were willing to testify to their innocence.
Ottilie said he turned up at multiple hearings for the students only to be told by university officials he was not allowed to speak on their behalf, but could advise them from behind the scenes.
After five months of a judicial process that Ottilie describes as “biased against the students,” all three of his clients were acquitted of the charges. But the experience exposed a deep flaw in the university’s treatment of its student body, Ottilie told me.
“In the process of working with those students, we discovered that Stanford. . . was denying them of their procedural due process rights at literally every step of the process,” he said.
- tptacek 4y agoI get that there are process concerns here (and that people think the rules Stanford is enforcing are dumb). But the stakes seem very low: we're talking about procedural due process protecting the rights of fraternities to host parties with alcohol.
- bgentry 4y agoBut the stakes seem very low: we're talking about procedural due process protecting the rights of fraternities to host parties with alcohol. No? The quote is in reference to a lawyer defending students accused of cheating on an exam and facing an administrative process with no presumption of innocence or right to a proper defense. A process which could permanently destroy their college education and career prospects.
- tptacek 4y agoHere we're talking about a case where students were, in 2012, accused of cheating on a bio test, and not found guilty. Meanwhile: cheating is absolutely rampant --- and has presumably only gotten much, much worse since 2012.
- mkoubaa 4y agoI've seen people cheat first hand dozens of times and know that a jury would find them not guilty. Legal standards are very high
- bgentry 4y agoThe standards should be high in any situation where you can significantly harm a person's life trajectory, even if not in a criminal court. Getting kicked out of Stanford for cheating could definitely derail a person's life.
- tptacek 4y agoThe overwhelming majority of high-achieving students can't get in to Stanford to begin with, so it's hard for me to understand how being asked to leave Stanford could be ruinous.
- Rebelgecko 4y agoPeople get expelled for cheating and it can impact the rest of their lives