GOOD: Washington State Senator Stands Up For Student Due Process.

Colleges and universities seem too quick to want to expel accused students rather than assess the facts and understand that they might not be dealing with incorrigible criminals but rather students who can be saved.

Washington state Sen. Michael Baumgartner, R-Spokane, seems to understand this. At a press conference about Barber, Baumgartner criticized WSU for the lack of due process afforded to the student athlete before he was expelled.

“This situation is unacceptable. It’s unacceptable to have any students expelled — not just Robert Barber, but any students — with a lack of due process,” Baumgartner said during the event. “WSU’s student conduct board is broken and it has been broken. It lacks the basic tenets of due process, and it’s different from other universities in the state, which are better, and it needs to get fixed and the people of Washington state are going to get it fixed.”

Baumgartner brought up a state bill that banned expulsions and suspensions among students in K-12. Baumgartner said this bill was passed because most of the punishments were affecting minority students. Instead of working with the students, schools were just ending their education and sending them to the streets.

“When you keep someone from getting an education, it’s a great cost to taxpayers,” Baumgartner said. “Higher education should fall on the same lines. It is tremendously costly to all of us to have people like Robert Barber not allowed to graduate from school.”

Baumgartner said that if WSU doesn’t reverse Barber’s suspension, he would hire the student athlete in his Senate office to work on constituent relations and, as a slap in the face to WSU, the overseer of financial requests from universities like WSU.

Heh.