BOG to Look at Student Appeals

The board will consider a revised policy for campuses' judiciaries at its Nov. 8 meeting. The policy would outline guidelines for how certain cases should be handled.

The issue was first brought up last school year by Andrew Payne, former president of the UNC-system Association of Student Governments, who said he was concerned that some students weren't aware of their appeal rights when going through the judicial process.

"This policy has been a long time coming," said ASG President Jonathan Ducote. "The cases that were going to the Board of Trustees were disturbing.

"They were reviewing academic appeal cases that should have been handled by the university. We just want to make sure students are aware of their options."

Under the current system, relatively minor cases such as grade appeals and other academic issues should be heard by the judiciaries at individual universities.

If people are not satisfied with a verdict, they can appeal to a higher body within the university. Only the biggest and most controversial cases are supposed to be heard by a university's BOT.

But many smaller cases are being heard by universities' trustees instead of being weeded out on a lower level, Ducote said, which has led to an ineffective judicial process.

"There were too many bumps in the road and no consistent basis to define what should be handled by the university," he said.

The new BOG policy would prohibit grade appeals and other relatively minor academic issues from reaching individual universities' boards of trustees.

Paul Cousins, director of the Office of Student Conduct at N.C. State University, said the policy also would establish new minimum standards, refine due process and define a proper appeals route.

The policy aims to make students more aware of their rights and give universities a better defense if lawsuits arise, he said.

The N.C. General Assembly has set minimum standards for school policy violations that also are crimes, said Mary Louise Antieau, director of the Office of Students Conflict Resolution at East Carolina University.

"The state policy is only the minimum standard that we go by," she said.

The BOG's policy mandates that all 16 system schools have a judicial process in place, but it allows the chancellors and boards of trustees at each individual campus to dictate the form that process takes.

"The Board of Governors is not trying to micromanage individual processes created by different universities, so this policy isn't going to name the exact procedures that should be used to go about disciplining students," Cousins said.

But he said schools must be able to defend their standards and that they must have a minimum level of due process.

The State & National Editor can be reached at stntdesk@unc.edu.