Washgrizfan1 said:
This matter moved beyond Engstrom early last summer, and he was overruled upstairs. The university court proceeding was horribly flawed and biased (and a federal court judge said as much), and the university has huge potential liability lingering. The university is probably hoping for a conviction, because an acquittal would probably lead to things unraveling for the university and Engstrom.
Getting that opinion was the best thing Dave Paoli ever did.
Judge Christensen's comments on UM "procedures" was devastating, because it opened up Engstrom's odd little world to public scrutiny. Engstrom had put into place a totally "PC" honor code system; it is a frankly offensive set of procedures wherein the accusing party has to prove nothing and the defending party can offer nothing.
It is outrageous, but it is also part of a DOJ mandate under the current administration which has thoroughly politicized University procedures. Engstrom went along. And it bothers me that anyone with a fair and honest conscience would do that.
Indeed, it reminds me too much of Duke President Richard Brodhead who was willing to hang his own students if it promoted his own authenticity within a very small group of academics as a liberal academic administrator fully in tune with the Frankfurt School of Social Justice.
Seriously, Engstrom put into place a system designed to convict. A Soviet Show Trial has more protections and due process.
It is outrageous, and it is one of several actions of that man that leads me to conclude that he is not presidential or leadership material and that the best interest of the students is the last thing on his mind.
He certainly did not expect a strong, public opinion on it from a sitting Federal Judge.
That Opinion exposed Engstrom and took a lot of underground grumbling and didn't just make it public, it also gave it an extraordinary credibility. It rocked the BOR.
Something like that goes to the ultimate question of judgment, and not just administrative judgment, but the quality of the person exercising that judgment.
After the Saudi incident -- when Engstrom couldn't seem to initiate anything even though it is the
single incident involving multiple victims as well as violence -- the University of Montana began to appear to the public as a place where students were subject to an irrational President; raw sexual violence against other students would not be punished if it involved sacred questions of multicultural diversity; but honest students involved in difficult situations would quickly and efficiently be condemned without any fairness at all. Firing two good and decent men was the last straw, and a resounding 6% enrollment drop, unprecedented in peacetime, shows that parents and students agreed that Royce Engstrom's University of Montana is not where they wanted to be.
For a University President to set up a veritable Kangaroo Court, have the audacity to call it an "honor court," a bizarre Orwellian "Newspeak," and pretend that he is operating in a fair and impartial manner was more than Judge Christensen could take.
And everyone who is anyone took notice.
And some of the rest of us did too.