By Anna Bryson
A former Student Government leader who was expelled in May 2017 for allegedly sexually assaulting a female student in his dorm room has won the right to a rehearing.
In a ruling last month, three Pinellas County circuit judges said that Samuel Goetz’s rights of due process were denied by both the university’s student conduct board and its dean of students.
Reversing their own June 12, 2018, ruling against Goetz, the judges gave him what he and his attorney have called an opportunity to clear his name so that he can attend school elsewhere and pursue his dreams of becoming a lawyer.
Goetz, who was vice president-elect of SG when he was expelled, has said he has no wish to return to the university.
Neither Goetz nor his attorney, Mark O’Brien, returned several telephone messages from The Crow’s Nest.
But O’Brien told the Tampa Bay Times that the ruling means that Goetz will now have access to additional material in the case, including interviews with the female student who accused Goetz of assaulting her.
Goetz’s dreams of law school “went up in flames once those allegations were filed in a process we believe was never fair from the start,” O’Brien told the Times.
According to documents in the court case, the sexual encounter occurred in Goetz’s dorm room on the night of Sept. 28-29, 2016.
The female student did not file criminal charges against Goetz. But on Oct. 6 she called the university’s anonymous hotline to report an assault, and she filed a formal complaint on Nov. 16.
In May 2017, the university student conduct board found Goetz guilty of “non-consensual sexual contact.” Dean of Students Jacob Diaz accepted the board’s findings and expelled him on May 10, then denied Goetz’s appeal on May 31.
In pleading his case with university officials and then in his lawsuit, Goetz contended he was railroaded.
He argued that the university denied him due process because it violated its disciplinary procedures, failed to give him proper notice of the allegations and evidence against him, and denied him the opportunity to cross-examine his accuser.
In their first ruling on the case, on June 12, 2018, Circuit Judges Jack Day, Amy M. Williams and Pamela A.M. Campbell sided with the university and denied Goetz’s motion for a rehearing before the university conduct board.
But in a new order dated Dec. 28, the judges withdrew that order.
In their new order, the judges said the conduct board and dean of students relied on a summary of an investigative report – “the only document on which USF relied in presenting its case” – in making their decisions.
That meant, the judges wrote, that some evidence and testimony that went into the investigative report was not made available to Goetz, whose “due process rights were violated by the nondisclosure of information that either directly or materially affected what was actually presented at the hearing.”
The Goetz case comes at a time of a national debate over sexual assault cases on America’s college campuses.
The administration of former President Barack Obama warned that assaults had become a serious problem. It directed school officials to crack down on the problem or risk losing some federal funds.
But critics of the Obama approach said that meant universities were playing cop, prosecutor, judge and jury in sexual assault cases, a process that trampled on the rights of the accused.
In recent months, cases in both state and federal courts around the country have tilted the other way, giving the accused broader rights.
Meanwhile, Betsy DeVos, the education secretary for President Donald Trump, has released a proposed rewrite of the rules governing campus sexual misconduct.
Her rules, released in November, give the accused more rights and narrow the cases schools must investigate.
Women’s rights groups contend her rules would make college campuses less safe for women, but others say they restore balance in a process that is skewed too far in favor of accusers.
Information from the Washington Post was used in this report.
She should have had him arrested. The University’s involvement in its students lives at USF is overbearing and is only done to make cases like this go away.
it’s amazing that this kid truly has no idea he is a whole scumbag.