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Katherine Weathers- hearing officer?


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7 minutes ago, brianstl said:

People are entitled to whatever political beliefs they want.  

That said, when you serve in a role like Weathers does (not just a hearing officer, but as Director of Student Responsibility and Community Standards) you have a duty to not to project any perceived bias.  The fact that she doesn't even realize this, means she isn't even remotely qualified for the jobs she holds. How stupid and tone deaf to you have to be tweeting what she was the day after your decision was delivered?  That is complete incompetence on her part.   

Very well stated.

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34 minutes ago, brianstl said:

People are entitled to whatever political beliefs they want.  

That said, when you serve in a role like Weathers does (not just a hearing officer, but as Director of Student Responsibility and Community Standards) you have a duty not to project any perceived bias.  The fact that she doesn't even realize this, means she isn't even remotely qualified for the jobs she holds. How stupid and tone deaf do you have to be tweeting what she was the day after your decision was delivered?  That is complete incompetence on her part.   

Absolutely. Her job is to rule on the poor judgment of college students and she exercised extremely poor judgment herself.

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3 hours ago, Pistol said:

This is a good post (there aren't many left these days). Could the punishments be thrown out or dialed way back because of these perceived biases? Sort of a "mistrial"? We may be grasping, but she certainly exercised poor judgment in not considering how her Twitter feed may be perceived.

I'll also say this, because I DGAF about getting tagged with "Bad Posts" - I have a go-to comparison to Weathers in my wife, who is also a lawyer and would be aligned politically with Weathers - she also attended the women's march Saturday, she was a women's studies major at SLU, was active in UNA at SLU, and is just kind of a badass in general. However, given what we now know about this particular situation, there's no way she would've been handed this investigation and come to the same punishments for these players. Not a chance. She's extremely cautious and even-handed, knowing how the school may be opened up to litigation (she's a Xavier fan and the Dez Wells case was not that long ago), and unwilling to level a significant punishment to one side without damn good reason to do so. And this case, as we know, was shaky. So it's kind of painful to me to read through hundreds and hundreds of posts drenched in contempt for women, academia, and a broader "climate" right now, because there are a lot of excellent, sharp, fair legal minds out there who don't have cases decided ahead of time because of their broader beliefs. Based on the shocking penalties handed down by Weathers, she doesn't appear to be one of them, and that's a shame.

More important to me than her Twitter feed, though, is the Christopher Winston case that a few people have linked. I've read that a couple times now and I know it's coming from one side but I'm absolutely puzzled as to why this kid was cited for anything. Do we know how it turned out?

His behavior, to me, is the whole point of college. Learning, discussion, exchange of ideas, and challenging of beliefs. I went to talks at SLU that had the exact same thing happen (i.e. someone stand up and really challenge a speaker in a Q&A), and it was far from the most progressive campus then (early 2000s). We also had some Palestinian students every year put up a wall by the clock tower and talk about their perspective on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Anyway, I can see no reason why Winston would've ever gotten in trouble, and the letter linked above claims a racial bias, and Weathers was one of the primary decision makers. I'm curious to know whether there are other data points here, and how the Winston situation turned out, if it has indeed wrapped up completely.

Outstanding points.

I am not sure whether the HO is biased. But there is no doubt in my mind that any attorney half as good as Rosenblum will show there's plenty of evidence to support reasonably perceived conflicts of interest and biases. 

Should never have been assigned to this job. Can you imagine the PR nightmare of a motion being filed in Federal Court for the social media accounts? And press conference announcing? Holy moly.

Pistol and RiseAndGrind like this
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3 minutes ago, Adman said:

Outstanding points.

I am not sure whether the HO is biased. But there is no doubt in my mind that any attorney half as good as Rosenblum will show there's plenty of evidence to support reasonably perceived conflicts of interest and biases. 

Should never have been assigned to this job. Can you imagine the PR nightmare of a motion being filed in Federal Court for the social media accounts? And press conference announcing? Holy moly.

Great post by Pistol and agree with what you're suggesting.  However, that won't be the winning argument in this appeal (not that you were suggesting it would be or that there is a winning argument for this appeal).  

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3 hours ago, brianstl said:

People are entitled to whatever political beliefs they want.  

That said, when you serve in a role like Weathers does (not just a hearing officer, but as Director of Student Responsibility and Community Standards) you have a duty not to project any perceived bias.  The fact that she doesn't even realize this, means she isn't even remotely qualified for the jobs she holds. How stupid and tone deaf do you have to be tweeting what she was the day after your decision was delivered?  That is complete incompetence on her part.   

Between Weathers tweeting what she did and Pestello retweeting that tweet praising Goodwin's triple double (and then deleting - which is probably confirmation for anyone who still doubts it was Goodwin), SLU really has some idiots on social media.

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5 minutes ago, slufan13 said:

Between Weathers tweeting what she did and Pestello retweeting that tweet praising Goodwin's triple double (and then deleting - which is probably confirmation for anyone who still doubts it was Goodwin), SLU really has some idiots on social media.

Exactly

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