AND HE’S RIGHT: Georgia lawmaker calls on Georgia Tech president to resign.
A Georgia legislator who has fiercely defended due process rights for college students accused of sexual assault is calling for the resignation of Georgia Tech’s president. State Rep. Earl Ehrhart, who in January held a hearing on the lack of due process provided by Georgia Tech and other state universities, called on Georgia Tech President Bud Peterson to resign over the concerns.
“He’s up for his contract renewal come April,” Ehrhart said. “The Regents, I think they’re frustrated with him. The alumni, I think they’re massively frustrated with him. He’s costing them [the school’s reputation], he’s costing their sons and daughters a safe environment on that campus, and they’re fed up with it, I think. We need somebody like a Mitch Daniels at Purdue to come in and have the guts to stand up to these activists in their cabinets, sweep them out of there and do the right thing, and they just won’t do that at Tech.”
Ehrhart called the lack of due process rights afforded to accused students “outrageous,” and discussed the tragedy of the situation.
“It’s such a great school. But the president and the administration are just clueless when it comes to due process on that campus and protecting all those kids,” Ehrhart said. “If I have to talk to another brokenhearted mother about their fine son where any allegation is a conviction and they toss these kids out of school after three and a half years, sometimes just before graduation, it’s just tragic.”
Ehrhart said whoever replaces Peterson will need to “clean house” at Georgia Tech in order to start giving students a fair process, or else the school needs to bring in someone with a “backbone.”
At a hearing in January, Ehrhart heard from the mother of a male student accused of sexual misconduct. The young man let his female friend stay in his apartment while she waited for her roommate to return to their dorm because she had lost her keys. Instead of sending the drunk young woman to wait alone in the cold and dark early morning hours, the young man kept her safe at his apartment. Sometime later, a friend of the young woman accused the young man of holding the alleged victim against her will.
Text messages from the young woman thanking the young man for allowing her to stay at his place while she waited were disallowed in the young man’s hearing. The young woman didn’t even believe she was a victim, yet because of the accusation of the third party, the young man was suspended.
Another male student was expelled after he rebuffed the advances of another male student. That student was eventually reinstated by the school’s Board of Regents after the student filed a lawsuit.
When the Insta-Daughter was a freshman at Georgia Tech, I wrote Peterson personally because armed gangs were staging “dorm invasions,” breaking into dorms and robbing students at gunpoint. I was concerned about her safety, but I didn’t even get a reply. That makes me wonder if one reason why the Tech administration is targeting its own students is its inability to deal with the actual, serious crime on and around its campus. I also felt that they really lied to us about the campus security situation when we were looking at the place, and would advise future applicants — and parents of applicants — to take whatever they say with a grain of salt.