Tufts Expelled a Student For Grade Hacking. She Claims Innocence (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader quotes TechCrunch: As she sat in the airport with a one-way ticket in her hand, Tiffany Filler wondered how she would pick up the pieces of her life, with tens of thousands of dollars in student debt and nothing to show for it. A day earlier, she was expelled from Tufts University veterinary school. As a Canadian, her visa was no longer valid and she was told by the school to leave the U.S. 'as soon as possible.' That night, her plane departed the U.S. for her native Toronto, leaving any prospect of her becoming a veterinarian behind. Filler, 24, was accused of an elaborate months-long scheme involving stealing and using university logins to break into the student records system, view answers, and alter her own and other students' grades.

The case Tufts presented seems compelling, if not entirely believable.

There's just one problem: In almost every instance that the school accused Filler of hacking, she was elsewhere with proof of her whereabouts or an eyewitness account and without the laptop she's accused of using. She has alibis: fellow students who testified to her whereabouts; photos with metadata putting her miles away at the time of the alleged hacks; and a sleep tracker that showed she was asleep during others. Tufts is either right or it expelled an innocent student on shoddy evidence four months before she was set to graduate.

Comments

Re:I do not understand this

[Shikaku]

News for nerds because:
1. School
2. Grades
3. Computers
4. Alleged hacking
5. Law

You really must be new here, most of those subjects are very nerdy.

Re:They got her money

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

If she files a suit or not is the key to finding out what actually happened.

That's easy to say, but not so easy to do, particularly when you're now stuck in another country.

Re:They got her money

[timholman]

You're trusting her version of events without getting the scoop from the university, due to privacy concerns. She can say whatever she wants. If she files a suit or not is the key to finding out what actually happened.

Exactly this. The university is constrained by FERPA in terms of the information it can release, even in cases of academic misconduct. If the evidence that Ms. Filler claims to have never seen includes other students' grades or academic records, then it will require a subpoena for the university to produce it.

One thing in particular strike me as questionable. From the article:

Filler was called into a meeting on the main campus on August 22 where the university told her of an investigation. She had "no idea" about the specifics of the hacking allegations, she told me on a phone call, until October 18 when she was pulled out of her shift, still in her bloodied medical scrubs, to face the accusations from the ethics and grievance committee.

Her insinuation that she was called into an ethics and grievance meeting of eight senior academics without advance notification doesn't pass the smell test. Having been personally involved in cases of academic misconduct at a private university, I assume that Tufts has a specific internal procedure that must be followed in cases like this. A student accused of cheating is first presented with the charges, and a hearing date is set at which the student answers those charges with evidence and testimony of their own. I would bet that Tufts can easily provide documentation that she was indeed notified well in advance of the hearing.

Contrary to what the Techcrunch article implies, faculty and staff are not going to accuse a student of such egregious academic misconduct without being very sure of their evidence, and being very careful to document that they followed their own internal procedures. Universities constantly deal with accusations of student cheating, and with students' parents who hire attorneys who threaten to sue the school. Holding a "surprise" hearing would be an invitation to a lawsuit, which Tuft's own internal attorneys would never allow.

Ms. Filler has the right to file suit against Tufts. What puzzles me is that she did not retain an attorney in this matter long ago. The initial accusations were made months before her expulsion. Or ... what if she did hire a lawyer, got nowhere given the evidence against her, and didn't tell Techcrunch?

She is now presenting her case to the court of public opinion, which may get her some offers of pro bono legal assistance. The question is whether such assistance will lead to any relief for her, once other people learn more from Tufts' side of the story.