THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 3, 1994 TAG: 9409030500
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Short : 37 lines
University of Virginia President John T. Casteen III on Friday defended the administration's involvement in a student honor committee case and payments of legal costs to a student accused of cheating.
Casteen said the case was so mishandled by the honor committee that U.Va. faced having a federal court throw out the system of student self-governance and paying at least $100,000 in damages to the student.
Christopher Leggett was expelled for cheating in 1992 but was exonerated this summer in an unusual retrial by the student-run committee.
The university agreed with the honor committee and Leggett's lawyer to allow the retrial. Two weeks ago, the school said it used state funds to pay Leggett's $40,000 legal fees. Casteen said the money came from the state's self-insurance fund, not from university revenues or tuition payments.
Casteen challenged arguments that the student's lawsuit would have been rejected by a federal judge and that the administration pressured the honor committee into exonerating Leggett.
``It was, and remains, the judgment of experienced university counsel and Virginia's attorney general,'' Casteen said, ``that forcing the case to litigation almost surely would have resulted in a court finding in Mr. Leggett's favor, a six-figure judgment against the university and an order that would have cut deeply into the honor system's tradition of student governance or destroyed it.'' by CNB