Why Columbia’s Interim Suspensions Are Wrong

BY JOHN Okay. WILSON

Yesterday, Columbia threatened scholar protesters, “if you don’t depart by 2 p.m., you’ll be suspended pending additional investigation.” This interim suspension included banishment from campus, a prohibition on attending courses, and eviction from campus housing.

All organizations dedicated to campus free expression ought to name for a complete ban on the idea of the “interim suspension.” All interim suspensions are a violation of due course of rights as a result of punishment should solely observe a good listening to and evaluation of an acceptable penalty. Imposing a extreme punishment such suspension and banishment should solely observe an investigation, listening to, and evaluation of wrongdoing; it mustn’t ever precede this due course of.

College students may be punished for misconduct by faculties, however solely after receiving due course of. In extraordinarily uncommon circumstances, that misconduct may be so critical that it justifies suspension from courses or removing from scholar housing. In even rarer circumstances, the misconduct is so extreme that it may justify banishment. However all of those punishments should solely happen after college students obtain due course of. 

The truth that Columbia and different faculties have utilized interim suspensions on a mass scale with none particular person analysis of misconduct is proof of an egregious violation of scholar rights. The truth that Columbia is imposing the extreme penalty of suspension and banishment for what are clearly very minor violations (unauthorized protesting and illicit tenting) is a critical violation of requirements of proportional punishment.

In essentially the most terribly uncommon circumstances, a school can briefly ban somebody from campus and not using a listening to provided that there’s an instantaneous focused menace of violence. Rapid threats of violence are extraordinarily uncommon, and even accusations of violence (which don’t exist within the Columbia case) usually don’t justify interim suspension and banishment. For instance, it’s terribly uncommon for any faculty to make an interim suspension of this type even when somebody is accused of a violent felony corresponding to sexual assault. Illicit tenting clearly doesn’t meet any normal of a menace of violence. As well as, any evaluation of a menace of violence have to be individually assessed. Mass banishments for collaborating in a protest can by no means meet this normal of threatening violence.

Columbia’s earlier violations of educational freedom and free speech deserve condemnation. However this collective interim suspension by Columbia’s administration is likely one of the most egregious circumstances of mass violation of scholar rights within the historical past of American larger schooling. No matter how you are feeling in regards to the scholar protesters, their trigger, or their ways, we should all oppose violations of due course of, and we should always reject all campus interim suspensions.

John Okay. Wilson is the creator of eight books, together with Patriotic Correctness: Educational Freedom and Its Enemies and the forthcoming e-book The Assault on Academia.