In a recent Carolina Journal Radio interview, host Mitch Kokai talked with Robert Shibley, senior vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) about a key change in North Carolina law that impacts legal rights of accused students.
Kokai: The issue that you’ve highlighted is one that deals with students at colleges and universities in North Carolina and some additional protections they have when they have to deal with the university in what would normally be considered a legal proceeding. Tell us what changed.
Shibley: That’s right. Well, for the first time, North Carolina actually became the first state to guarantee students who are accused of crimes on campus the right to counsel in those campus tribunals. So if you’re accused on campus of anything from theft to assault to rape, right now, virtually every university will put you on their own sort of campus trial for those offenses, as well as sometimes turning it over to the local law enforcement.
But up until North Carolina passed this law … virtually no university let you have an attorney represent you, even though you are being adjudicated for these serious offenses that, off campus, are often felonies. So North Carolina really took a bold first step to make sure that students who are accused of those crimes get fair representation.
Kokai: Now, let’s be fairly clear about this. Someone who is charged in their local community and has to go through the court system, they would have a lawyer in that situation, but not for something that’s adjudicated on campus?
Shibley: That’s correct. If you are accused of any crime in the real court system, you are entitled to an attorney — not only to be able to hire your own attorney, but to an attorney even if you can’t afford one; one has to be provided for you. This law is not as ambitious as that. All it says is that if students are accused of crimes on campus, they can, at their own expense, hire their own attorney to represent them.
