Your rights
Does one have the right to legal counsel in an academic disciplinary case?
First off, this was a "disciplinary" hearing, NOT an "academic" hearing.
It is important to keep those issues separate. One refers to misbehaviour,
the other to just plain failure to do well enough in classwork.
As is often ther case in legal questions, the answer in this case is ...sometimes, maybe.
Some Courts have ruled there IS a right to counsel in University hearings, some have disagreed.
Here is a very good discussion on the situation:
http://www.ncherm.org/pdfs/rtoattny.pdf
Let me clarify that my comments were based on my own sense of what is FAIR,
not particularly on what actually goes down in the guise of being "legal" in lopsided actions
taken by bullys such as a big universities, which themselves have virtually unlimited access to legal counsel,
lots of money, and often the ears of a lawmaking body to support their tyranny..
This guy was, in his mind, acting as a journalist,
and was (perhaps improperly) treated as though he were an active participant in the protest.
(Or so he claims)
Perhaps more appropriately, he should have been arrested,
and tried criminally for trespass, the only crime I can see which he may have committed.
In that case he would have had an absolute right to counsel, and an appeals process in the case of error.
If found guilty, and the conviction upheld,
The UC might have exercised some arbitrary policy to expel him for the criminal conviction.
As it was, they convened a Kangaroo Kourt consisting of the good Dr,
and perhaps some others, who may or may not have had any real judicial authority whatsoever,
and, as I understand the report, simply told him he had no rights.
In this case, UC had the ability to intimidate him with the threat of ruining his academic career.
However our hopelessly right-wing skewed US Supreme Court rightly or wrongly rules, eventually,
I think its a pretty sad situation when we are all just okey dokey
with stripping an individual of the right to counsel in ANY action critical to his life and livlihood,
just because we CAN.
