Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli questioned the methods of the Department of Education Wednesday while announcing that Virginia Tech is appealing fines resulting from the department’s investigation of the April 16, 2007, campus shootings.
The DOE fined Tech $55,000 for two violations of the federal Clery Act. The fine is the maximum possible fine per violation. A DOE investigation found that Tech violated two portions of the law, failing to provide a timely warning and failing to follow its own timely warning policy.
Cuccinelli questioned the legitimacy of the investigation, calling it deeply flawed and “shoddy at best.”
He criticized the investigators for not making a trip to Blacksburg to speak with the officials and law enforcement officers involved on the day of the shootings. University spokesman Larry Hincker said the investigators did not get a chance to hear from those they are regulating.
“We believe they should have had some interactions with the people whose decisions they were critiquing,” Hincker said.
S. Daniel Carter, public policy director of Clery Act advocacy group Security on Campus, said he was disappointed in the heated rhetoric Cuccinelli used to describe the investigation. Security on Campus filed the request that led to the DOE investigation.
“I think the findings were very thorough,” Carter said. “I don’t think they were at all shoddy, as the attorney general has characterized them.”
Cuccinelli also said he had “personally examined the conduct of the federal bureaucrats at the Department of Education.”
“I must tell you I find their actions appalling,” he said.
He pointed to three “troubling signs of bad faith on the part of Virginia Tech’s detractors in the federal bureaucracy.”
In addition to the alleged lack of thoroughness, he also said the DOE’s timing and transparency presented problems. Cuccinelli said the release of the fines took much longer than necessary.
“A civil trial against the school and some of its officers is now only a few months away,” Cuccinelli said. “And the U.S. Department of Education has chosen this strange time to issue its fine and publicly hype its action. This is an extraordinarily odd coincidence.”
Robert Hall is the attorney representing the families of Erin Peterson and Julia Pryde — two Tech students killed in the shootings. The suits allege gross negligence on the part of university and mental health officials. The trial begins in September.
He said Cuccinelli investigated the coincidence.
A version of this article appeared in the Apr 28 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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Yeah, but here's the thing: there's no "I" in team but there is an "I" in win ( and several in cucinelli) and of you want win, cucinelli is on your team.
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Virginia Tech used the Hokey "Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund" to prey on the sympathies of the public. If you remember, VT appropriated almost all of the donations to pay off the grieving families of the victims. As a condition, Virgina Tech insisted that those taking the public donations would agree not to bring suit against the school for the aggregious lack of action on that fateful day. What gall!! The money never came from the school in the first place but was instead entrusted to the university by the kind and generous hearts of the many doners!.
I for one am so thankful that a few of the families had the presence of mind not to accept the payola. The Virginia Tech administration needs to be held accountable for their actions and lets hope these families can make it happen. If Virginia Tech had worried more at the time about the fate of it's students and less about hiding from the public the dorm double-homicide, they wouldn't be a defendant on a mass murder negligence trial.
AC
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I'm upset the families are getting anything from the school. The gal of it that the administration of virginia tech is being blamed.
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