He can always sue colorado college for breach of contract. He has no damages though. Parties to a contract are free to contract with whomever they wish. CC chooses to not contract with him…
He has also breached the contract(abusive conduct). See below
So lets see no emotional distress damages ( does not apply to breach of contract), no attorneys fee damages( thats by contract or statue only) He has no case.
@fallenchemist: Are you saying it’s debatable that they can make their own rules? If so, it’s not debatable. The parties (the college and the students) are free to contract away most any right, including that of speech. Courts who would not otherwise enforce a speech restriction will enforce contracts. I agree that in this case the rules are quite ambiguous and likely hard to convince a court to uphold. I said as much in post [url=<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19035134/#Comment_19035134%5D31%5B/url”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19035134/#Comment_19035134]31[/url]. It’s not that this is an unsettled area; it really isn’t. It’s just a question of ambiguity in contract, something court’s have dealt with for centuries.
@tiger1307: I am not at all convinced he runs afoul of “abusive conduct,” and even if he does it’s not at all clear that the sanction was warranted. Neither of us has any idea whether there’s an attorneys fee provision in the admission contract, and regardless many contractual causes of action have their own fee shifting law (such as, potentially in this case, bad faith).
I also think the “Disruption of College Activities” is a sure loser for the college. He didn’t obstruct freedom of movement (because internet), he didn’t make any noise or similarly disrupt class (again because internet) and he didn’t lead or incite anyone to do anything.
@tiger1307 Your layman’s interpretation is way off base. He paid to go to school this semester, so there are monetary damages at issue. When the school cashed his check, they contracted with him. They cannot just then arbitrarily decide not to contract with him, he has to have violated the contract. That is the issue as I see it; is that portion of the contract, the code of conduct, specific (unambiguous) enough to be enforceable. If he made the kinds of claims I outlined and they were upheld (which would determine if he breached the contract, despite your breezily saying he did), the school is absolutely on the hook. And as is clear from just this discussion, a suspension of two years has long term consequences. More damages, this time to his reputation. He definitely could have a case. Again, it all assumes there are not more facts than presented. Rarely the situation, and we may only find out if he presses the issue beyond an internal appeal.
I think you and I are talking past each other somehow. I think we agree. As I understand it (correct me if I am wrong but my lawyer son says I am right) ambiguities in contracts are usually decided against the writer of the contract.
@fallenchemist: Your lawyer son is largely correct but there is a bit of important nuance. The contract itself may contain a provision that tells the court how to interpret ambiguity. These often take the form of provisions that say things like “ambiguities should be resolved in favor of the intent of the parties,” rather than against the drafter. Courts will also often look to other portions of the contract before agreeing that there is ambiguity. It’s rare for courts to look at provisions in isolation. I haven’t read enough of the code to know whether the terms are defined or used elsewhere (though I doubt it; the code looks pretty sloppy from a legal perspective), but if so that may resolve the matter.
There’s also the question of how much the student should reasonably have known. Courts will often look to the common definitions of words to determine what they mean. There’s enough wiggle in “ridicule, embarrassment… or other similar result” that the court may think the student was sufficiently on notice. Pushing back against that is the free speech provision of the code, which I linked earlier.
There’s definitely a case here, if the student wants to take it, but I don’t think it’s totally clear either way. Except as to Disruption because that is a frankly ridiculous charge.
One of my kids graduated from Colorado College. I’m sorry the college apparently couldn’t find a teachable moment in this, before it came to a 2-year suspension, and perhaps a lawsuit, over a stupid statement on the Internet.
CC’s AA enrollment is rather low (~3%) even compared to other selective LACs. They must want to attract a more diverse student body. That, combined with racial tensions on campuses across the country this year, may have put the administration on a hair trigger.
demosthenes49 two parties to a contract are free at any time generally to stop doing business with each other. Whether there are damages is another thing. You dont get emotional distress damages for breach of contract. You dont get exemplary damages for breach of contract. Attorneys fees are by agreement or statute. I havent seen any statue or contract provision that support attorneys fees. Bad faith is not a cause of action. What you may be thinking of is promise without intent to perform. That is a tort and it is almost impossible to prove. So what are his damages? Refund of one semesters tuition. I am sure the school will give it back. Without damages he cant state a cause of action against CC and he will never get anywhere in court What is the case you see? I could have missed something but I dont see him even getting past the initial pleading stage
I’m wondering if this is CC tying this to its efforts to create a welcoming and safe campus for minority students, especially URMs on a campus to increase racial diversity considering their student body is over 70% White as of 2014 and their argument is along the lines of the offending student’s post effectively disrupted those efforts. Especially if the argument references cyberbullying in the suspended student’s use of Yikyak and the internet.
Website college data as of 2014 stated CC's overall student body is slightly over 70% White:
@tiger1307 You misstate the law and present a very naive argument, IMO. There would rarely be any cases for the courts to decide under, I will repeat the word, your breezy interpretation of things. Let’s take the simplest case. Under your interpretation, any private school can walk up to any student, for no reason at all, and just say “We don’t want you here any longer. We will refund your tuition for the semester but we want you out within 48 hours”. Even ignoring all sorts of potential complications that can only be remedied by monetary settlement (the student turned down other very competitive schools and cannot get back in to those schools, now he has to “settle” for lesser schools; he turned down scholarships that are only available to entering freshmen, etc.), I find that hard to believe. The contract was for the time it takes to complete a degree up to a certain limit (7 years at most schools) barring behavior on the part of the student that violates the code of conduct. Almost all schools have language in their handbooks under graduation requirements that have wording to the effect you can continue unless you violate the code of conduct, but even if they didn’t it would be ridiculously easy to show inequitable and arbitrary treatment. Courts just don’t like that stuff.
More to the point, in this case they have tarred his reputation with a suspension that is known to all who ask. He shouldn’t have to lie about having attended the school in the future, not to mention of course the ready availability of this information these days via the internet. Colorado College isn’t just telling him to leave, they are making an assertion as to why they are asking him to leave that is now known to all. There are potential damages all over the place here, because if the College is found to have exceeded the terms in their own handbook, they are in breach of contract and damages are up to the judge or jury as to their extent. Any competent attorney can claim far more than you have asserted. Attorney’s could be the least of it.
You don’t like his supposed opinion about blacks or women or black women, so you would have him tarred and feathered. I say supposed because I think we have all, sometime in our life, made a joke that didn’t represent what we really believe just because the joke was too easy, too “good” to pass up, no matter how misguided that might have been. We are going to support this dramatic a change in this young man’s life over this short message that could be completely a joke, and even if not is an opinion on what type of women he likes? Think about how easy it would be to cause misery in your life or any other if our protections for speech really drop that low.
Yeah, I didn’t want to get into all that minutia because the odds that a college code of conduct has wording that involved, like a typical business contract, is really remote. But again, we largely agree.
I will point out, however, that satire has long been recognized as protected speech. Now sure, the college could argue that they were intending to ban satire also as speech that results in ridicule and embarrassment, but boy are they going to have a hard time showing that they haven’t shown movies that have satire, hosted comedians, allowed it in all sorts of ways. All the student has to do is claim he meant this as satire and I think the college has a VERY hard time defending itself. It is one potential strategy anyway. It just shows how ridiculously far we have sunk to try and protect everyone from being “hurt”. It cannot be done, and a lot of innocents are being swept up along the way, and there will be more.
This is stupidity. There is nothing racist about not being attracted to certain people. There is no obligation for me to be equally attracted to all kinds of people. I’ve never met a red headed guy or a South Asian guy I’ve found “hot.” So what? They aren’t obligated to find green eyed women with freckles hot either. There is nothing remotely racist about the young man’s comments.
“I’m sorry but there are plenty of black women that are hot and that is not really an opinion.”
Sure it is. My H doesn’t find even the “hot” black women (Halle Berry et al) attractive. So what? I doubt Halle Berry is dying to date nerdy balding Jewish guys either.
Here’s my beef with this whole thing - it took place on Yik Yak. Not a campus forum/website/etc. This was the virtual equivalent of going down the street, off campus to the local watering hole and talking to your buddies over a beer. So what if the kid had literally gone down the street, off campus to the local watering hole, and talked to his buddies over a beer. Would the school still want to suspend him?
Part of the reason Colorado College is particularly white is that it’s very enticing to those who like to ski, which is an activity that skews white (and upper middle class). There’s s limit to how appealing a college in the mountains will ever be to people who don’t like to ski.
Um, nobody cares what you think sexually of South Asian men, @Pizzagirl. Making an even more asinine and impertinent
remark doesn’t make another asinine and impertinent remark look any better.
Someone at CC thought that under the circumstances, the comment about NO black women being attractive was mean-spirited enough to warrant snitching on him; and in all likelihood it was another white person who did the snitching. Sounds like that particular yik-yak thread had been going on for some time and - yeah - he’s been left holding the proverbial bag. If someone comes across a burning fire and throws more fuel on it, they’re just as guilty as the party who started the fire.
And he must have really p/o’d the two adults who handled the hearing to draw such a lengthy exile. Does he have a legal case? Maybe, maybe not. Colleges have legal insurance
Based on the article linked to above, he was suspended for for much more than the one YikYak post. There were a series of “hate” posts which he says he did not write, but the school says he did. Not sure if there is any way to prove that one way or another, but it is incorrect to say he was suspended over one post.
", nobody cares what you think sexually of South Asian men, "
Well, that’s exactly the point. Why should anyone care that this young man doesn’t find black women hot?
The community gives too much power to these statements. This is a victimhood culture.
If someone said they didn’t find me attractive (or 5’4", green-eyed white women with freckles, or women of German/Irish/Russian descent, or economics majors, or people born in New Jersey, or mothers of twins, whatever other demographic I get to represent), my response would be - oh well, I’m sure you’re no prize either. You aren’t important enough to me for me to fret that you don’t find me or my demographic hot.
A black women who is “offended” by this man’s statement puts entirely too much of her self-worth on whether a man (and a white man at that) finds her attractive. What should that have to do with her inherent dignity and self-worth? We are all valuable and worthy as human beings because we intrinsically ARE, not because other people judge us to be hot / attractive / whatever.