January 28, 2001

COLORADO STUDENT JUDICIARY SYSTEM ABUSES ITS POWER

Carlos Martinez is a student at the University of Colorado, Boulder -- but he wouldn't be if he hadn't fought a long, lonely and courageous legal battle against the University and its runaway Judicial Affairs Office.

That's the office charged with enforcing the code of student conduct, and it operates with scant concern for students' rights and a magisterial indifference to its own rules. Judicial Affairs director Andrea Goldblum had expelled Martinez in April 2000, as the culmination of a long process which ultimately amounted to his failing to write a letter of apology for being rude to university staff.

Martinez went to court -- filing several different cases, in fact -- and on Dec. 29 Boulder District Court Judge Daniel Hale ordered that he be reinstated, calling the university's conduct ''inexcusable.''

''A disciplinary system must have the appearance of impartiality and fairness, neither of which were apparent in this case,'' Hale wrote.

I don't have room to cover all the details, and as Hale observed, ''this case has been characterized by a torrent of filings that have managed to almost completely obscure the material issues.'' But you can follow them all on Martinez' Web site, dryly called WorstCaseEver.com, which is how Goldblum described his conduct.

It would more nearly be true to characterize her conduct as the worst case ever of imperial overreach by the campus judiciary, except that cases such as this are extremely common. Alan Charles Kors and Harvey Silverglate documented many such abuses in their book The Shadow University. Since the book was published they've established the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (on the Web at thefire.org), based in Philadelphia, to provide a clearinghouse for information about student-conduct cases.

In December 1999, Goldblum suspended Martinez for violations of the student conduct code. He requested, as is his right under university rules, a formal hearing before the Judicial Affairs Hearing Board. It took place in February 1999.

''The hearing was a joke,'' Martinez told me last week. ''They wouldn't let me bring a reporter, citing their right to privacy. I wanted an open hearing.''

The JAHB, according to Hale, overturned Goldblum's one-semester suspension. It imposed a one-year probation for ''interfering with University activity'' and for ''harassment,'' required Martinez to write a letter of apology and take an anger-management class.

Such brain-washing punishments, though objectionable and ineffective, are commonplace in university discipline. The purpose is not to teach but to humiliate.

Martinez asked for a review, which was conducted by Robert Maust, who like Goldblum is part of the office of the vice-chancellor for student affairs and cannot be regarded as an impartial party. He upheld the decision of the hearing board.

Goldblum then wrote Martinez setting new deadlines for the letter of apology and the anger-management class. But as the court found, there were no such classes available before her deadline. When Martinez did not comply, she expelled him.

As matters proceeded, Martinez discovered further irregularities. The university stonewalled him on the release of documents related to his case, imposing unreasonable requirements for when and where documents could be inspected. In an open-records complaint he filed against the university, he cited rules limiting requests to 15 records per visit.

Just to review his own records, Martinez write, ''would take up to one visit a day, every business day, for more than one month.''

When he did finally get the documents, he discovered that the record on which Maust relied was doubly faulty; it contained material Martinez himself had never seen, and it didn't contain relevant parts of his correspondence with Goldblum. Both are contrary to university regulations.

Martinez has four cases pending now, including one before the Colorado Court of Appeals. The university has hired outside counsel, and there's talk of a settlement.

When he graduates, Martinez wants to go to law school. He's already compiled an impressive portfolio.

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