4 ms·

> A week later I heard from the investigators. For reasons I wasn’t privy to, the university had hired an outside law firm, based in another Midwestern city an

> A week later I heard from the investigators. For reasons I wasn’t privy to, the university had hired an outside law firm, based in another Midwestern city an hour-and-a-half flight away... the phrase "billable hours" came to mind > I’m no expert on legal fees, but I was pretty sure the meter was ticking in $10,000 increments. > new Title IX complaints have been filed against the faculty-support person who accompanied me to the session with the investigators... Another team of lawyers from the same firm has been appointed to conduct a new investigation. > At the end of the interrogation, the investigators asked if I wanted to file my own retaliation complaint against the student who’d revealed the charges. Well, I see one party who's winning it big here. On a related note, it's obscene how locked-down the process sounds. Forbidding having an attorney present, forbidding the recording of the proceedings, being extremely unwilling to reveal the charges ahead of interrogation so that a defense could be prepared. Is it even legal to forbid recording? Some quick Googling suggests the jurisdiction the author is in is a one-party consent state, but IANAL. What would be the consequences of refusing to accept their terms? > Also that my tweets were apparently being monitored. Well, "monitored" is too strong IMO -- really, people just got angry enough to stalk the author on social media until they found something damning. Then again, as this and other pitchfork mob cases show, you may as well treat everything you say or write as if it is monitored; because someday, someone will probably find a reason to dig through it.

caseysoftware 11y ago
This is one of the big problems with these things being handled as "administrative" processes instead of criminal. You don't have the right to an attorney. You don't have the right to know the charges against you. You don't have the right to face the accused. This is rule 12 from Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." - Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.

caseysoftware 11y ago

This is one of the big problems with these things being handled as "administrative" processes instead of criminal. You don't have the right to an attorney. You don't have the right to know the charges against you. You don't have the right to face the accused. This is rule 12 from Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." - Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.