lawyer referral service austin

max: hi. i’m max moran. i’m here for a conduct hearing. hi, max. nice to meet you. max: nice to meet you as well. actually, your advocate is already here, soif you want to have a seat with him i’ll let everyone know you’re here. jonathan: i’m jonathan. i’m your faculty/staff advocate.

i’m max. good to see you. have a seat. if you choose to have an advocate, you canhave someone like me. we’re trained. we’ll help you out and we’ll be here withyou at your actual hearing and we’ll support you through the entire process. if you know a faculty or staff member youcan have them serve as your advocate or if you prefer, student conduct can help findsomeone to help you out.

there are a number of faculty/staff memberswho are willing to help. max: great. jonathan: you ready? max: i’m ready. hi, max! i’m jessica. nice to meet you. max: nice to meet you, too. hi, jonathan. good to see you again. are you ready to start?

come on in. you can have a seat over here. how are you both doing today? max: doing pretty good. jonathan: alright. good. how are classes going? max: classes are going well. finals are on their way. yes. i know it's a busy time. i’m glad that you were both able to comein today so that we could try to resolve the

situation and talk about it. what i’m hoping to do today is we’ll startwith some introductions so you know who’s around the table, i will have you look atyour student bill of rights and then we’ll also go through the public safety report. as of right now that’s the only informationi have about what happened. so after i go through it, i’ll turn it overto you to get your perspective about what happened. okay? alright.

i may have some questions for you but we’lltalk about what happened and then i’ll make a decision about what should be the appropriateoutcome. so i’m going to turn on our audio recorderand i’ll explain why we record our hearings. today is may 5th, 2016 and we’re talkingabout a public safety report. we’ll start with introductions. my name is jessica and i work in the centerfor student conduct and i’m one of the hearing officers. my job today is to listen to the case, listento all the information and make a decision about whether or not you violated policy,and – if you did – think about what’s

the appropriate outcome. maybe you could share your name for the audiorecorder. max: i’m max moran. okay. jonathan: and i’m jonathan ntheketha. i’m max’s advocate. great. okay. right now, for today, there is only the threeof us here. sometimes there are other people at hearings.

we often ask public safety to attend and anofficer or assistant director in their office will come and they get to present informationfrom their perspective about how the situation might have impacted their public safety officersor how the incident may have gone in general and they also are around to answer questions. right now we don’t have a public safetyofficer but sometimes they do attend. if the situation that we were talking abouthappened in the residence halls, we might have a residence life representative presentand they would be able to talk about the residential perspective, such as how were other studentson the floor feeling or how were their staff members impacted and it would be a fullerconversation from that perspective as well.

if you were an ntid student, there might bean ntid liaison present and they make sure communication is smooth and everyone is understoodduring the hearing. if you were an athlete, someone from the athleticdepartment may also attend so they could represent their perspective and what the situation mighthave done to impact the athletics department or your team. does that make sense? max: yeah. so before we go into the public safety report,i’m going to have you look at what we call your student bill of rights.

it was emailed to you but i want to give youan opportunity to take a few minutes and read through it and let me know if you have anyquestions. do you have any questions about the studentbill of rights? max: none presently. if you have questions throughout the hearing,feel free to ask. so i want to point out the audio recorder. we record all of our hearings as a matterof our practice. we retain the audio recordings as part ofthe case record just like we do with the public safety report or any other documentation thatwe might have.

and you would also have access to this ifthere’s a decision today that you can appeal. you would have access to the recorder so thatyou would be able to prepare for your appeal. does that make sense – why we record ourhearings? so how about i start going through the publicsafety report. i like to read it out loud so that we allhave an understanding of what it says – although you may request a copy of the report and wewould send that to you through email. so i’m going to read through it and theni’ll turn it over to you to share your perspective about what happened. so the public safety report states that officerkoehler wrote the report and he writes “last

monday at 8:00 p.m. public safety was dispatched…(fades out). narrator: are you getting ready for a hearing? here are the type of questions you can expectafter the hearing officer finishes reading the report. so i’ve shared the public safety report. do you have any witnesses that might have directknowledge about what happened during this incident? max: no ma’am. if you did, i would always think about “arethe witnesses appropriate?”

meaning “do they have direct information?”as we do not allow character witnesses. a character witness is someone who can saythat you’re are good person or a nice person and we already believe that. we’re talking about your behaviors on onenight or from one specific incident. so we will look at a witness to has knowledgebecause they were there or because you told them immediately afterwards. you also could request witnesses. the link to the form to do that would be inthe charge letter that you received. so what i’m going to do now is pause therecorder and we’re going to take a break.

i’m going to ask you and jonathan to waitoutside in our waiting area and i’m going to consider the policies that were listedin your charge letter and think about whether or not you violated them and, if so, thinkabout what would be the appropriate outcome. i’ll then ask you and jonathan to come backin and i’ll share the outcome with you. do you have any questions? max: no, ma’am. jonathan: let’s just go wait outside and wait untilthey call us back in. max: okay. jonathan: thank you, jessica.

max: thank you, ma’am. alright. come on in. okay, max, thank you for waiting. i’m going to turn the recorder back on andtypically what happens during the deliberation is i think about the policies that were listedin your charge letter; i reflect on our conversation we had during the hearing, which would includeyou sharing if you think you’re responsible or not for breaking policy, the impact that youthink you had on others, the impact that this situation has had on you, and i also lookto see if you have any conduct history. i think about all of that and try to makethe best decision possible and i think about

what would be fair for you as an individualas well as what would be fair for the community and make sure they’re safe and that everyonehere at rit is able to focus on their studies, which is the reason that they’re here. so given the situation and all the informationthat i’ve had, i’ve made a decision that you are responsible for the policies thatyou were charged with in your charge letter and when i think about the conversation that ihad the standard that i use as part of our process is called “preponderance of theevidence” which means more likely than not or a little more than 50%. did you violate policy?

and i think you did. based on the conversation it sounds like youwere taking responsibility for what happened. many students do, and i do appreciate that. i appreciate your honesty throughout thisprocess. given the violations and given our conversation,i think the most appropriate outcome would be to place you on a status of what we callprobation. probation is typical for a year for a student. sometimes it’s more, but i think placingyou on probation for a year in this situation is appropriate.

what probation means is that you’re on astatus with that university that means you’re not in good standing with rit. something to keep in the back of your mind– it doesn’t stop you from going to classes. it doesn’t impact your financial aid orscholarships. but it could prevent you from taking on someleadership positions on campus – perhaps going abroad or even taking on some jobs,okay? but really what i want you to think aboutis when you’re making decisions, think that you're - -or remember that you’re on probation, and how couldthat help you make better decisions so that you could be off of probation in a year andthen it won’t impact you anymore on campus.

and since you’re on probation that meansthat you get to appeal the decision. so i’m going to talk about a few more thingsthat you may have to complete that goes along with the probation and then i’ll finishtalking about the appeals process. the other options for an outcome are a warning,which – a warning means that you’re in good standing with rit but given the seriousnessof this situation i thought that probation was more appropriate. and then the other potential outcomes aresuspension and expulsion and because the situation was not as serious asuspension-level case, which means that you’re separated from the university, probation doesfeel the most appropriate. okay?

i’m going to require some educational conditionsthat we spoke about so you can help learn from the situation and people on campus canhelp support you, so i think i’m going to assign you to a workshop and possibly another- a meeting with a staff member on campus. if you complete those, then there won’tbe a hold put on your account and i think you’ll really learn from this experience. okay? so on this piece of paper there are the deadlinesthat you have to complete everything and i’m going to give you a copy of this piece ofpaper so that you have all the information and i’m also going to email you later todaywith this same information. the email is going to be a more formal resolutionthan this piece of paper, but we like to know

that students can walk away with their deadlinesand the contact information so they can start working on their conditions right away. as i talked about before, probation meansthat you can appeal that decision and when you get that email from me that i mentioned,there’s a link right in that letter so that if you want to appeal you can click on the linkand it will take you to an online form and that’s where you can submit your appeal. and the appeal would then be approved by theappeals office and that appeal would then be heard by our university appeals board whichis made up of a student, a faculty or staff member and an associate vice president forstudent affairs.

so that’s something to consider and somethingto talk to jonathan about. so, the last part of the hearing is to revieweverything i just shared with you on paper, see if i can answer any questions for you,and then i’ll have you sign and date the bottom. we always have students sign and that meansthat you understand what i just shared with you. it doesn’t mean that you agree to it. so i just shared that you can appeal and that’swhat you can do if you don’t agree with the decision. okay?

but take a minute to review this. jonathan can look at it, too, and let me knowif you have any questions. max: can i just sign at the bottom? jessica: yep. so i’m going to give you a copy of thisto take home, and, like i said, i’m will email you today with the information. i really appreciate you coming in today. i’m very glad that you utilized jonathanas an advocate. i think that was really helpful.

and i’m glad that you took responsibilityfor your actions. i think we had a very educational conversation. i really got to understand your perspectiveand you provided a fuller picture for me to understand the incident that was documentedby public safety. so thank you for coming in today. after i email you if you have any questionsplease let me know and i’ll also include jonathan on the email if you want to talkto him about it. i think we’re all set and i’ll stop therecorder. max: alright.

thank you, ma’am. thanks. jonathan: thanks so much, jessica. thank you. bye. max: bye.