Counsel Nabs Its 1st Client

Senior William Hashemi, IDC president and founder, said the IDC offers an alternative to defensive counsel from the student attorney general's office.

The student attorney general's office now provides both the prosecutor and the defense counsel in Honor Court cases.

Both Hashemi and Student Attorney General Brad Newcomb declined to comment on the charges facing IDC's client or the date of the trial.

Hashemi began work on the organization last fall when 24 members of James Coggins' Computer Science 120 class were on trial, charged with academic cheating.

"The premise we started out with was to provide an option to people charged with an Honor Court violation," Hashemi said. "I think there's an inherent conflict of interest in the way the student judicial system is set up."

Hashemi said the system is adversarial, because student attorney general counsels can be either prosecutors or defenders. He individually represented students in three Honor Court cases before the IDC was formed.

Hashemi said the IDC's first client heard about the counsel by word of mouth, a trend he wants to see continued. "We want to work with (resident assistants) to set up programs in the dorms -- let them know we're available," he said. "We'll be less dependent on the references of the student attorney general staff and more dependent on the students."

Newcomb said Hashemi would need advertising to get cases. "At this point the student attorney general staff has not made a decision as to whether we would mention (the IDC) in assigning defense counsels," he said. "Unless he does a lot of advertising, I'm not expecting a lot of cases to go his way because students don't know about his organization."

The IDC, which currently has 10 members, received training that Hashemi said is identical to the training student attorney general counsels receive.

Winston Crisp, associate dean of student affairs in the School of Law, led an IDC training session at the request of Dean of Student Affairs Melissa Exum. Exum said the training included rules of confidentiality, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, case management and the Instrument of Student Judicial Governance. She said the IDC will be monitored along with the rest of the student judicial system.

Crisp, who has helped with student attorney general counsel training and is a member of the Committee on Student Conduct, said he does not know if the IDC will provide solid counsel. "Only time will tell," he said. "They appear to be as serious and as committed to it as any students I've ever seen."

Hashemi said the IDC's counsel members were just as well-trained as the student attorney general's counsel, and they would be able to alleviate some of the student attorney general's caseload.

But Newcomb does not see the IDC playing a large role, pointing to the fact that Hashemi has only provided counsel in three cases. "Three cases out of 150 isn't much of an impact, in all honesty," he said. "We have as many people choose their friends to defend them as students choose the IDC. (Hashemi) hasn't been a major alternative to our defendants."

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.