Decision report 201201320

Summary

Mr C complained that the university mishandled an appeal into allegations of misconduct by his son. In particular, he complained about what he considered to be an excessive penalty of exclusion and the time taken by the hearing to reach their decision. He also complained that they unreasonably considered previous misconduct by his son (during his stay in residential student accommodation) when reaching their decision but failed to take account of the successful completion of his previous year of study and placements.

We found that the correct penalty was imposed in terms of the university's procedures as this was the second episode of non-academic misconduct. We noted that although there was some delay in arranging the hearing, this was reasonable because evidence had to be gathered beforehand. We also found that, although the university were entitled to take account of the residential accommodation misconduct, this did not have a significant bearing on their decision. In addition, the university explained that they do not take previous academic performance into account when imposing a penalty of this nature, which we accepted.