UCSB Ruined an Innocent Male’s Life With a Shameful TitleIX Process. UCSB Got a Slap on the Wrist.
The University of California-Santa Barbara suspended an accused student based on physical abuse claims that his non-student accuser recanted before the Title IX investigation started.
It did not lift the “interim” suspension, which prevented “John Doe” from starting his freshman year, until a judge ordered it to let him back on campus with no restrictions in spring 2017. Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge Thomas Anderle said the university’s conduct through the process was “arbitrary and unreasonable.” Yet the public university will pay Doe less than $5,000 for the trouble it has caused him since fall 2016. In an Oct. 23 order, Anderle flatly rejected a motion by Doe’s attorney for nearly $465,000 in “private attorney general fees” under California law. The statute is intended to reward plaintiffs who enforce “an important right affecting the public interest” that helps a “broad class of citizens,” as if they were acting as attorney general.
thecollegefix By Jeremiah Poff
