Former Wesleyan student Jeremy George dropped his lawsuit against the University last month, according to a report in The Hartford Courant. George was expelled from the University last spring in connection with a cheating scandal that involved fifteen other students, most of whom were believed to be former members of the football team. As the teaching assistant for an introductory computer science class in fall 2002, George was accused of helping other students plagiarize exam answers.
Director of University Communications Justin Harmon confirmed that the case had been dropped, but declined to comment on it, stating that it is University policy not to comment on students’ personal and academic affairs.
“When the parties finally come to terms there’s generally an agreement not to discuss the facts that were in dispute,” Harmon said.
Norman Pattis, George’s attorney, told the Courant that the case “was settled to both parties’ satisfaction” and declined to comment further. Archie Bailey, George’s father, said that his son did not receive money and was not re-admitted to the University.
George filed his suit in New Haven in August, claiming that the University Honor Board unfairly expelled him after exonerating him in an earlier hearing. George filed an appeal to President Doug Bennet, which was dismissed, forcing George to take legal action against the University.
The University’s legal position was that George was never exonerated in his earlier hearing.
“At no time at the meeting on January 28 did the Honor Board exonerate Mr. George,” said former Dean of the College Freddye Hill in an affidavit filed on August 6 with the lawsuit. “The Honor Board does not decide whether code violation has occurred until hearings are completed and deliberations are held.”
The lawsuit attracted national media attention, including an article by the Associated Press. According to Harmon, the negative attention did not hurt the University’s reputation.
“I think there’s a lot of room for readers to acknowledge the difference between a situation like this and what happens in other [universities],” Harmon said. “The story is ultimately not a significant driver of Wesleyan’s academic reputation because it so extremely anomalous.”
Because George and the other students involved were athletes, the lawsuit brought up questions of athlete academic performance at the University. The report of the University Task Force on the Honor Code and the Code of Non-Academic Conduct in February 2003 found that, between spring ’00 and spring ’01, over 50% of Honor Code violators were male student athletes, mainly from large team sports.
“While this percentage dropped to [approximately] 35% in the most recent academic year [’01 to ’02], the numbers are still alarming,” the report said.
Still, Harmon says that academic problems for athletes are not as prevalent at Wesleyan as at other schools, where athletics are more of a focus.
“I think that people know Wesleyan’s reputation and the fact that we work very hard to have all Wesleyan students including athletes adhere to a set of academic values,” Harmon said. “There’s not the sort of dichotomy between athletes and other students academically that you find in a lot of environments.”
Leave a Reply