POMONA Gives the Finger to Calif. Judge and Constitutional Due Process
As more and more schools (72 since the Dear Colleague letter) have found themselves on the losing end of due process decisions, a handful of institutions have resisted in a troubling manner. Rather than acknowledge that court decisions showed the need to reform their unfair procedures, schools instead have maneuvered to neuter an accused student’s efforts to go to court…Regarding a Pomona case, Judge Strobel set aside Pomona’s guilty finding, stating that the lack of any opportunity for cross-examination raised “serious fairness questions,” and was so “prejudicial” to the accused, that the college denied him a “fair hearing.” Pomona has the right to appeal an adverse ruling, but instead, Title IX coordinator Sue McCarthy informed the accused that Pomona was going to re-try him, using a different adjudicator but the exact same evidence from the original case, and under the same procedures that had produced the decision Judge Strobel set aside. The university did not inform Judge Strobel of this rather startling decision, which appears to violate existing Pomona procedures.
academicwonderland.com By KX Johnson
