University of Virginia: Lack of Due Process During Honor Code Investigations

Students at the University of Virginia (UVA) rejected a proposed referendum that would have deprived UVA students of existing due process rights under the school's procedure for adjudicating honor code violations. The system had been criticized after physics Professor Louis A. Bloomfield filed 122 charges of academic dishonesty against students who allegedly cheated in his class. After students filed lawsuits, including one whose degree was revoked at a trial where he was absent because he had graduated eight years earlier, UVA proposed a series of changes to the proceedings. These included disallowing juries to decide the relative seriousness of an offense, a reduction of the number of jurors and the percentage necessary for a conviction, and the removal of randomly-selected jury pools to a pool consisting of 22 students who oversaw the honor committee. Prior to UVA students' voting against these changes, FIRE wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post documenting the current flaws of the system while denouncing the proposed changes.