UGA's hearings for individual students were opened after an undergraduate, identified in court documents as John Doe, unsuccessfully sued to keep his name unpublished after he was found guilty on campus of setting fire to pamphlets on the dorm door of a homosexual student. The paper argued such records are not exempt under the federal Buckley Amendment, which ensures the privacy of records such as student grades and medical records. Universities, Paulk said, once partnered with towns to whitewash student incidents or to provide preferential treatment to favored students. Such cases led to the Higher Education Act of 1998, which requires all colleges receiving federal funds to keep open crime logs and permitting the disclosure of the outcomes of disciplinary proceedings. Now, a seminal group founded in the 1980s by a student stabbing victim, Dana Getzinger.
Students here say they have done so.
Soon after the precedent-setting John Doe court ruling regarding UGA, Paulk said, student journalists were reporting that three of their fellow students had been caught embezzling thousands of dollars from the campus bookstore. Meanwhile, the university has found another way of working out students' problems privately. Bracewell, a 35-year veteran of university administration, said his office has moved to adjudicate disciplinary cases behind closed doors when the guilt of a student is not contested. He insisted that those cases settled without formal hearings aren't subject to public access laws. We are such an anomaly.'' opyright 1999 Athens Newspapers Inc.