Miltenberg: “College Denied Claims Made by Expelled Student in Lawsuit,” The Dartmouth

On April 30, the College filed its response to a lawsuit alleging that it led an “unfair” and biased investigation resulting in the wrongful expulsion of a male student accused of sexual assault. Dartmouth has denied the claims put forth in the complaint and has demanded a trial by jury “on all claims so triable.” … The lawsuit, which was originally filed on Jan. 7, 2019, pertains to the December 2018 expulsion of John Doe … In his complaint, Doe alleged that his expulsion stemmed from an investigation that was “influenced by a pervasive, campus-wide bias and based upon widely discredited set of inequitable and unfair procedures.” Namely, he claims that the College failed to consider that Smith provided “altered text messages” to the investigator, the investigation did not take into account the results of Doe’s polygraph examination and the investigative process itself “lacked basic elements of due process.” … Andrew Miltenberg, an attorney who has represented male clients in similar cases at Dartmouth and several other universities across the country, remarked that he has noticed a recent trend in students accused of sexual misconduct vying to clear their records. “We’re filing a new [case] almost every two to three weeks,” Miltenberg said. “More and more, you see these students challenging the results at the disciplinary level … I think there’s going to continue to be a steady increase in these types of cases because I think that regardless of what [U.S. Secretary of Education] Betsy DeVos does with the new guidance regarding the Department of Education and the Office for Civil Rights, there’s going to be pushback on college campuses.”

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