COLLEGE REPUBLICANS, SF STATE SETTLE SUIT

SF State has agreed to give the College Republicans organization and members Leigh Wolf and Trent Downes $100 each in nominal damages and pay their $4,500 attorneys’ fees after a lawsuit settlement stemming from an October 2006 event. The settlement, reached earlier this month, will also ensure that the university remove any record of disciplinary proceedings from students’ files.

“We are very excited about the settlement, happy that the entire CSU system changed the code,” said Downes, president of the SF State College Republicans. “I believe it’s going to protect all students in the future.”

After settling the College Republicans lawsuit against SF State, the California State University system made clarifications in its Student Conduct Code to exempt the words “civil” and “inconsistent” behavior violations as grounds for discipline.

“There can be tension,” Magistrate Judge Wayne Brazil said at a preliminary hearing on Oct. 31, 2007. “Tension [is] sometimes considerable between the goals of a university, which should be centrally about expression, and not necessarily about reasoning.”

The lawsuit stemmed from an incident in 2006 when the College Republicans held an anti-terrorism rally in Malcolm X Plaza and stomped on signs with Hamas and Hezbollah flags, one which displayed the name Allah in Arabic.

The Associated Students Inc. board unanimously adopted a resolution in 2006 condemning the College Republicans after receiving a series of complaints, the Xpress reported in November 2006.

Subsequently, the College Republicans faced investigation proceedings to determine if they violated the school’s student civil conduct code, with a possibility of losing official group status and ASI funding. They were put under a formal investigation.

After a preliminary hearing in October 2007, Brazil suggested that the parties settle the suit. He made recommendations for the CSU to clarify and elaborate certain definitions and set a mediation date for February, as long as the parties agreed to do so.

Following the hearing in November, Brazil restricted SF State with a court order from basing any disciplinary proceedings on the grounds that a conduct is not “civil” or “inconsistent with SF State goals, principles and policies.”

However, the court order would not grant the College Republicans’ request to also restrict the school from basing proceedings on the grounds that “the conduct in question constituted a form of ‘intimidation’ or ‘harassment’ that threatened or endangered the health or safety of any person.”

Earlier this month, the settlement agreement was completed and signed. In the agreement, SF State first “specifically denied any wrongdoing, unlawful discrimination, violation of the law, or breach of any standard of care owed.”

The CSU amended the student conduct code so that being “uncivil” and “inconsistent with SF State goals, principles and policies” is not grounds for disciplinary proceedings or an investigation for a student or an organization.

Also related and significantly affected by the agreement is a section on sexual harassment. CSU removed the language “unwelcome conduct which emphasizes another person’s sexuality” from the code and inserted “conduct that is sufficiently severe, pervasive and objectively offensive as to substantially disrupt or undermine a person’s ability to participate in or to receive the benefits, services or opportunities of the university.”

The code also changes a standard of conduct that is used to further define sexual harassment from sexual conduct “has the purpose or effect of hindering” to sexual conduct that “substantially and unreasonably hinders.”

“The resolution served to clarify,” said Ellen Griffin, university spokeswoman. “Certainly anything that makes our policies more clear is helpful.”