THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, September 6, 1994 TAG: 9409060034
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Long : 178 lines
Chris Leggett had been booted out of the University of Virginia for cheating on a computer science test. He'd gotten nowhere with appeals to the student honor panel. Still, the Northern Virginian wanted his name cleared.
So Leggett's parents - a CIA official and the secretary to a vice president of The Washington Post - hired a law firm to press the issue. Not just any firm, but Williams and Connolly, one of Washington's most elite. Its clients have included Hillary Rodham Clinton.
After pushing hard and threatening to sue, the firm won Leggett an honor retrial in July. It took a student jury less than an hour to overturn his conviction.
Case closed?
Hardly.
The student-run honor system - perhaps U.Va.'s most cherished tradition - has been engulfed in turmoil since. In the past 1 1/2 months, threats, admissions and condemnations have been spilling from almost every party in the case:
An honor committee member resigns, complaining about ``a bullying law firm and university administration.'' The three honor executives from the previous year, who had rejected Leggett's initial appeal, lambaste their successors' actions as ``despicable and unethical'' and vow to release information to prove their point.
The U.Va. administration then acknowledges its role: It had signed an agreement, approved by the Board of Visitors and the state attorney general's office, with the law firm to guarantee a new trial - and to reimburse the Leggetts for $39,000 in legal fees.
Both the university and the honor leaders send letters to the former honor executives and to the editor of the Cavalier Daily student newspaper with a stark warning: Reveal more information on the case and you could be sued or brought up for disciplinary charges.
Yet on Friday, President John T. Casteen III releases his own 11-page letter, with Leggett's approval, offering plenty more details about the case. He cites ``remarkable procedural errors'' in the initial guilty verdict and says if U.Va. hadn't reached the settlement it would surely have lost a court case and been forced to pay a six-figure sum and revamp the honor system.
The complicated case has raised a tangle of issues that go well beyond the question of Leggett's guilt or innocence:
Is U.Va. threatening freedom of speech to avoid full disclosure of the honor case? Has it shattered the independence of the student-run honor system? And can money and power influence a campus judicial system, as critics say it does the U.S. courts?
``In disciplinary proceedings, it is becoming increasingly apparent to sophisticated parents that you can have your voice heard more prominently when you take aggressive action,'' said Sheldon Steinbach, general counsel for the American Council on Education. ``But the question in my mind is: How many other parents have the knowledge and resources to do that?''
The chairman of the Honor Committee said, however, that students acted independently in deciding to hear the appeal and in overturning the conviction.
``The only pressure we felt was the need to address the situation,'' said senior Jimmy Fang of York County, who survived a move to impeach him last Wednesday night. ``Our decision was based solely on the merits of the case. The fact that we had the Gucci of law firms after us did not affect it.''
U.Va.'s threat to punish the editor, junior David Hanlin of Waynesboro, if he published more details of the cheating case is virtually unprecedented, said Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Washington. Three years ago, he said, Southern Methodist University in Dallas tried to discipline an editor in a similar situation but backed off after public outcry.
``If they took any punitive action, they would have a First Amendment lawsuit on their hands that they would lose,'' Goodman said. ``It suggests that the university places more importance on its own internal rules than on the Constitution of the United States. That is not a good thing.''
But U.Va. spokeswoman Louise Dudley said the school is bound both by its rules, which prohibit ``intentional conduct which violates the rules of confidentiality of the Honor Committee,'' and by federal law barring the unauthorized release of student records. ``It is a real and complicated tension between the freedom of the press and individual rights and privacy,'' she said. ``But freedom of the press is not without its limits.''
Chris Leggett, a senior business major considering law school, is continuing his studies at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania. Despite his exoneration, he doesn't want to return to U.Va. ``I wouldn't feel comfortable there,'' he said last week. ``Ever since this started, I felt I was pushed aside.'' He declined to discuss his case, except to say he was glad he was vindicated.
His father, Robert, of Vienna, Va., is still seething. In the initial proceedings, Leggett said, his son ``was never able to fairly defend himself. He was basically railroaded by a bunch of overzealous people.'' Leggett said his son was not allowed to call witnesses on his behalf and didn't receive adequate representation.
Casteen, in his letter, said Leggett was treated unfairly in the first trial because he was not allowed to call as a witness a professor who believed it was impossible to tell whether Leggett or his neighbor had cheated. That testimony was ruled ``speculative.'' Casteen also said that Leggett's student counsel was ``inexperienced'' and did a poor job of cross-examining opposing witnesses.
The executive committee of the Honor Committee approved the retrial this summer to allow ``new evidence'' - the testimony of four professors, two from U.Va., who said it was impossible to prove who cheated, Casteen wrote.
Tasos Galiotos, a recent law school graduate from Virginia Beach, complained that the ``new evidence'' already had been considered when he was the honor panel's vice chairman in the 1993-94 school year. But E. Jackson Boggs Jr., the 1994-95 committee member who resigned in protest, was troubled less by the decision than by the manner in which it was reached.
Boggs' chronology, which jibes with accounts in the Cavalier Daily, goes as follows:
After the school year is over, the members of the executive committee agree to a retrial, consulting, not with the full Honor Committee, but with university officials. That leads to the agreement approved by the board. But July 24, the full Honor Committee votes to invalidate the agreement.
Two days later, the panel members reconvene to consider a statement from the university's lawyer, James J. Mingle, telling them that they were ``legally and morally obligated to follow this settlement - that is the opinion of the Board of Visitors,'' Boggs says. ``The clear message was: Get out of the way.'' The committee members don't object, paving the way for the appeal.
Boggs, a law student from Tampa, Fla., said members of the executive committee themselves acknowledged being pressured by U.Va. officials even before that day. ``They admitted in session to having been yelled at and questioned in the following way: `Who is going to represent you if you have to fight a lawsuit?' The implication was: You'll be on your own.''
But Casteen said that there was no pressure and that the student executive panel concluded, independently of the board, to grant a new trial.
The administration's acknowledgment of its role in the case has upset advocates of the honor system, even those who have long since left U.Va.
``It was one of the things about which I was most pleased and proud of: Students were very much allowed to govern their own affairs,'' said William Hicklin, a Chatham lawyer who graduated in 1984. ``Now I find that the administration has decided that student self-government is something that can be steamrolled if it chooses to do so.''
But Dudley, the university spokeswoman, said the involvement of university officials and board members was legitimate: ``The Board of Visitors is accountable for the actions and decisions of students who have been delegated this authority. So if there is the potential of the threat of a lawsuit, the Board of Visitors would review it, because in the end the Board of Visitors would be held accountable.''
And, Casteen said, the alternative to the settlement would have cost the students far more power. Leggett, he said, was threatening to ask a court to require the Board of Visitors to oversee honor matters, in addition to monetary damages. ``The result would have been a radical change in the honor system itself,'' he wrote.
Galiotos was one of three former honor officials who vowed to release the ``complete dossier . . . to correct the untruths that have been perpetrated.'' He said last week that he wasn't sure whether they would proceed after receiving the warning letter from Fang.
Hanlin, the student editor, was sent a similar letter from Mingle, the university counsel. But Hanlin said it wouldn't stop him from printing other details that he discovered about the case: ``I support any means necessary to open the honor system. Students should be informed as much as possible so they can make intelligent choices.''
Both Hanlin and Galiotos said they believed the letters were moot now because Leggett had waived his rights of confidentiality by talking to the media and allowing university and honor officials to publicize certain points. But Fang said that a case was deemed ``open'' only if the honor panel formally agrees to open it or a student signs a statement allowing full disclosure, and neither has occurred.
Mingle's letter warned that U.Va. could lose federal funding if the university were found in violation of the law barring disclosure of student records. But Steinbach, the American Council on Education lawyer, said he doubted that would happen: ``Since that is so Draconian, that (clause) has never been invoked. The Department of Education has always looked to accommodate these situations.''
Robert Leggett has cleared his son's name. But he's still critical of the U.Va. honor system: ``I find it outrageous as a citizen of Virginia that I have to hire a law firm to get a fair deal. The students are in over their heads in a case as complicated as this one; they need to be held accountable for their actions.''
Casteen, however, said the honor panel's final decision reaffirmed the ``community of trust'' on campus. ``Their silent courage in the face of intense and uninformed criticism is a testament to what honor means at the university,'' he said. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Thomas Jefferson
KEYWORDS: UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA by CNB