‘Most students don’t think about their rights until they’re faced with a situation where they need these rights’
With growing concerns about due process on college campuses, a civil-liberties group is rolling out a new program intended to help students advocate for each other in campus judicial proceedings.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education plans to start 10 campus organizations this fall under the banner “FIRE Student Defenders,” FIRE Student Network Director Molly Nocheck told The College Fix in a phone interview.
Student Defenders is similar to a 41-year-old nonprofit at Ohio University, Students Defending Students, that defends students accused of disciplinable offenses, where Nocheck served as director as an OU student.
Nocheck told The Fix she drew inspiration from that experience and modeled much of FIRE’s new program after SDS, which drew national notoriety after it sued the administration for blocking its cheeky T-shirts “We get you off for free.” (The university settled and changed its speech-code policy.)
SDS uses volunteer student advisers who go with accused students to “procedural interviews, administrative hearings, and university hearing boards,” and tell their peers about their rights as students.
MORE: Ohio U. goes after due process group’s cheeky T-shirts
Similarly, the Student Defenders program aims to “educate fellow students on their rights and options, advocate for fair and clear policies and procedures, and advise and counsel students in the university judicial process.”
Participants help students prepare their cases as they go through the disciplinary process, “actively advocate” for them in hearings if their institutions permit it, and serve as a “watchdog for due process and legal equity on campus.”
Their broader aim is to hold administrators accountable for their treatment of accused students, who can be suspended or expelled for violating campus policies.
Participants will also help students who have been arrested and face legal consequences, according to Nocheck: “Most students don’t think about their rights until they’re faced with a situation where they need these rights.”
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FIRE isn’t content with helping campus groups get off the ground and calling it a day: It’s hosting an invite-only conference in October to receive feedback from the first crop of Defenders.
It held a similar conference in the past year for a handful of students who were involved in programs that resembled OU’s Students Defending Students, Nocheck said, in order to get their feedback on FIRE’s proposed launch of Student Defenders.
What sets FIRE’s program apart from SDS and similar campus groups is that it provides materials for students to form clubs and helps them pursue their mission, rather than operating its own clubs.
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“While these groups have no formal connection to FIRE and will vary in size and structure, they will be united in their mission to promote legal equality and protect due process for their fellow students,” FIRE said in its announcement of the program.
The national civil-liberties group is providing would-be campus groups a guide to get them started, a “sample constitution,” directions on recruiting and training defenders and marketing help, including a $150 startup grant and $50 advertising grant.
Students that are starting Student Defenders groups this fall did not respond to Fix requests for comment.
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