Opinion ID: 569324
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Did Appellants Waive Their Right to Complain?

Text: 48 The Magistrate held that because the General Counsel's letter of October 6 offered appellants a meaningful opportunity to challenge their terminations, their failure to demand such a meeting waived their right to complain that they were denied due process. We have just held, however, that appellants were never offered an adequate opportunity to challenge President Rutford's faculty-termination decisions. Furthermore, the record establishes that appellants twice demanded hearings of the sort provided for in the Board of Regents' Rules and Regulations, the only grievance procedures of which they were aware, and that their demands were rebuffed each time. Accordingly, we hold that appellants did not waive their right to challenge the termination decisions where they actively sought to invoke the procedures to which they in good faith thought themselves entitled, and were not offered a constitutionally adequate alternative. Only where faculty members know that the opportunity for [an adequate] hearing is available and choose to forego that opportunity, [do] they act at their peril. 34