Why Gugliuzza wasn’t expelled

Members of the Bloomington community were shocked last week by the arrest of IU student Christopher Gugliuzza for torturing and killing cats.

IU Associate Vice President of University Communications Mark Land later publicly confirmed Gugliuzza had been suspended and is not allowed to complete the fall term.
This has left some wondering why IU did not expel him in the face of what Land said are “facts that aren’t really in dispute.”

The main reasons IU’s summary action did not go further lay with the evolution of due process on campus and the intent behind the suspension.

In Ashiegbu v. Williams, a federal court ruled that an Ohio State University student who had been indefinitely suspended on a summary basis had been expelled as a practical matter and thus had a right to a pre-expulsion hearing but not a pre-suspension hearing.

A federal court struck down a right to a pre-suspension hearing again in 2001 for a Michigan State University student.

That means that Gugliuzza would have a right to a hearing before being expelled, but not before being suspended.

IU’s provost is authorized to summarily suspend students who are deemed a serious threat to people or property.

The measure takes effect within 24 hours, and challenging it is an arduous
process.

Students are normally granted a hearing at IU. However, summarily suspended students have a matter of days in which they must ask for one.

Nor is university suspension like a week-long high school suspension.

Summarily suspended students must wait a year before petitioning to return to IU. In contrast, OSU now uses an interim suspension that allows students to petition for reinstatement within three days.

This is not the first time IU’s authority to summarily remove students from campus has been publicized. According to a 2001 IU press release, then-Dean of Students Richard McKaig used the power to suspend a fraternity that had repeated alcohol violations.

Sometimes, the degree to which a student poses a legitimate threat to others is not a clear-cut matter.

In 2011, a federal judge ruled in IU’s favor in Medlock et al. v. Trustees of Indiana University, a search and seizure case in federal court in which a student found with a large cache of marijuana and paraphernalia in his apartment received a summary suspension.

The policy is punitive by nature, but the main focus and justification for any temporary suspension must be maintaining public safety.

This, in addition to due process guarantees that include the opportunity for a hearing in which the University has the burden of proving a student responsible for a violation, is why summary suspension rightly remains a limited power.

­— danoconn@indiana.edu