How UVA Holds Students “Accountable”
In the recent past, the University of Virginia Division of Student Affairs has dealt with two very different kinds of student-conduct cases. In one, the division probed charges against pro-Palestinian protesters who were arrested for trespassing during the tent-encampment fracas last May. In the other, Student Affairs investigated hazing activities of the Theta Chi fraternity.
Student Affairs officers submitted formal complaints with the Student Judiciary against eleven protesters who refused orders to disband a tent encampment and were subsequently arrested. Local courts dropped the trespassing charges, and after a series of meetings with students, the UVA administration abandoned the code-of-conduct charges as well.
The outcome of the hazing investigation turned out very differently. In the most serious charge against the fraternity, Theta Chi brothers compelled pledges to eat a “heinous” concoction that included habanero peppers, causing some to vomit. The university ordered the fraternity to cease all functions until 2028-29; the prohibition extended to organizing an “underground” fraternity or even an informal group of former Theta Chi brothers. Additionally, according to the hazing report, individual students accused of trying to obstruct the investigation would be referred to the University Judiciary Committee and the Honor Committee “as appropriate.”
University officials insist that they followed standard procedures in dealing with the pro-Palestinian protesters. “Despite the high profile of this case, the University followed the same disciplinary practices and processes we always do,” UVA spokesman Brian Coy told The Daily Progress.
But people I’m in contact with strongly suspect that UVA has two sets of standards: leniency for left-aligned student protesters and severity for fraternities. Indeed, there are widespread suspicions that the UVA administration is engaged in a sustained war against the Greek organizations.
Those fears have been heightened by circulation of an audio recording by a Theta Chi member of an interrogation by Donovan Golich, assistant director of accountability with Student Affairs. In soliciting the student’s cooperation in the investigation, Golich threatened to report him to his ROTC commander, file Honor charges against him, and file obstruction charges with the student judiciary. The student could lose his ROTC scholarship and be temporarily banned from the Grounds, Golich warned. “I’m done with people like you,” he said at one point. “I don’t f--k around.”
The difficulty with comparing instances like these is that each case has unique characteristics, there are gaps in information, and contexts differ. Some will suggest that it is ludicrous to compare the fates of students who engaged in hazing with students exercising their constitutional right to protest.
But according to the University’s Hazing Misconduct Reports, UVA has issued sanctions against ten Greek organizations over the past three years. The shocking Golich audio makes it indisputable that Student Affairs plays hardball with them.
Was the administration as unforgiving with the protesters? One protester is quoted by The Daily Progress as saying she and her comrades were subjected to individual questioning that was “more akin to interrogations.” But no audio exists to reveal whether their questioning was equally harsh, so it’s impossible for outsiders to judge.
I shared a draft of this article Friday morning with the UVA office of communications and asked the University to respond in any way it saw fit. University spokesman Brian Coy contacted me shortly before publication:
While I can’t comment on specific details of personnel matters, Mr. Golich is no longer an employee of the University. We take accusations of this nature seriously and we expect all our employees to treat our students and each other with respect and professionalism.
Policy, Accountability, and Critical Events
Within the sprawling UVA bureaucracy, the administrative unit for overseeing student life is the Division of Student Affairs, which at present is run by Interim Dean Cedric Rucker. His portfolio encompasses student safety and health, threat assessments, multicultural activities, student housing, Greek life, and student clubs with special attention to multicultural and LGBQT+ communities.
Under the Dean is Kenyon R. Bonner, the vice president and chief student affairs officer. Bonner’s responsibilities involve him with the organs of student self-government — the Honor Committee, the Student Judiciary Committee, and Student Council — as well as the apparatus that enforces the student code of conduct.
Bonner’s bailiwick includes the Policy, Accountability, and Critical Events (PACE) unit, which is headed by Marsh Pattie, associate vice president for student affairs. If there’s a large rally or controversial speaker, Pattie is the man on the ground who interacts with University Police to ensure that everyone obeys the rules.
As the unit that enforces the student code of conduct, PACE monitors complaints submitted anonymously through the “Just Report It” system, investigates the complaints, and refers allegations as appropriate to the Honor Council or Student Judiciary. The top official profiled under Pattie on the PACE website is Donovan Golich, who has served as associate director of accountability since November 2013. His colleague, Elizabeth Ortiz, is assistant director of accountability.
Student Affairs gives prominent attention to hazing education and prevention. The Hoos Against Hazing webpage defines hazing as “any activity expected of someone joining a group (or to maintain full status in a group) that humiliates, degrades, or risks emotional and/or physical harm, regardless of the person’s willingness to participate.”
UVA considers hazing rituals a threat to student safety and health. It’s not just a matter of drunk students getting alcohol poisoning, jumping out of windows, or tumbling down stairs. Rituals that entail insulting and humiliating pledges can cause “hidden harm,” contributing to anxiety, depression, and eating disorders, reports UVA.
Along with statistical snapshots of Honor and Judiciary outcomes, UVA posts Hazing Misconduct Reports for the past three academic years. Of the twelve groups sanctioned, ten were Greek organizations. Nine were fraternities, five of which were terminated. One of those was Theta Chi.
Student protesters
The wave of pro-Palestinian protests at UVA following the October 7 terror attacks on Israel have raised a host of issues relating to free speech, free assembly, and student conduct. The administration argues that protests and demonstrations must abide by the same time-manner-place restrictions that apply to everyone. A key theme of the rules — which are dutifully spelled out online — is that protesters cannot disrupt the activity of other members of the University community, and they cannot engage in intimidating behavior.
Militant students have consistently probed the gray areas in the rules. To skirt a KKK-era state law banning the use of masks for purposes of concealment and intimidation, for instance, protesters wore COVID masks on a public-health pretext. UVA administrators backed off enforcement of the anti-masking rule, citing the likelihood that local prosecutors would refuse to file charges.
The flashpoint in the May protests occurred over the right of students to pitch tents in encampments occupying ground near the Rotunda. Protesters argued that they were peacefully exercising their rights to free speech and assembly. Administration officials said they were breaking rules against the erection of tents on the Grounds. Protesters defied repeated orders to take down the tents, then ignored repeated orders to disperse. Under the close scrutiny of the Youngkin administration, the university gave the OK for state police to break up the encampment. Many students and a few faculty members were arrested and charged with trespassing.
The Albemarle County District Court judge dismissed all of the trespassing charges, but some University officials were determined to refer the conduct of eleven students to the Student Judiciary where the students stood the risk of suspension or expulsion. The officials mentioned by name in press reports were Donovan Golich and Elizabeth Ortiz.
What happened next is based upon reporting by Charlottesville’s The Daily Progress.
UVa … offered the students an opportunity to settle the matter informally and without a trial. If the accused would agree to meet individually with the Division of Student Affairs and discuss the alleged violations, the matter would be resolved. Six of the students ultimately took the offer, but another five pushed the university for a collective meeting.
One of the six was Cady de la Cruz, whose diploma had been withheld until the charges could be run through the Student Judiciary. “Students asked for this meeting in May,” she told the The Daily Progress. “The university completely ignored our demand to meet with us collectively and instead pursued separating us in individual meetings that were more akin to interrogations.”
After extensive back-and-forth against the backdrop of extensive local media publicity and a letter from dozens of faculty members to President Jim Ryan, UVA permitted the five students to read a statement. Accepting the informal resolution, the students met with UVA administrators on September 11, read statements reiterating their commitment to the Palestinian cause, and the matter was closed. As far as I can tell from the The Daily Progress account, the only concession wrung from the students was an agreement to not record their meeting. There is no record that they suffered any punishment.
De la Cruz and other protesters painted the September 11 meeting as a victory. She told The Daily Progress that UVA did not want the publicity that would have come from student-run trials. She and her colleagues would have welcomed a trial, she said, which would have showed that UVa “persecutes” pro-Palestine students. “After months of bad press and only a few days before a public trial, the university folded to the pressure and met our request.”
If de la Cruz’s speculation is correct, UVA’s decision to settle was motivated by PR pragmatism. The interesting question, then, is who in the UVA hierarchy made the call to settle. Was it Golich or someone above him?
Bad Bros
The Theta Chi hazing incident took place March 17 this year and was reported to University authorities five days later. The investigation took almost two months to complete, and a final decision was rendered June 12.
According to the Hazing Misconduct Report, fraternity members quizzed the probationers on fraternity lore and punished wrong answers by making them perform push-ups, squats and other exercises. Probationers were “ridiculed, screamed at, or otherwise verbally harassed”; forced to wear costumes; coerced into engaging in embarrassing tasks or acts of “personal servitude,” and made to carry pledge packs that included cigarettes and condoms.
This was all routine stuff, but one item in the list of offenses was problematic: they were made to consume “a mixture of heinous/unknown items and habanero peppers.” New members vomited, became physically fatigued, and, incurred “illness,” including the “loss of feeling or sensation in limbs.” The report made no mention of anyone being hospitalized.
There proceeded an investigation in which University authorities questioned multiple fraternity members. One new member who underwent interrogation made a recording, which, as I understand it, he gave to his father. From there, excerpts of the recording began circulating widely. Many members of the University community will find Golich’s bullying and threats to be shockingly harsh, suitable for a Manhattan DA squeezing an informant to take down a crime boss perhaps, but not for a student paying tens of thousands of dollars to attend the university.
Here follows a transcript:
GOLICH: I’m going to be very blunt with you. You’re in ROTC. The information I have is something I can give to your commanding officer, and I will, based on what we have already corroborated. So, I don’t like doing that, but I’ll tell you that at a previous institution I worked at, I did that, and they were discharged from ROTC after that. … I don’t say that lightly because I understand you have more collateral impacts than other people do, especially if you have a scholarship with them and they’re paying for your school. You would have usually to pay it back. And also you’re subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. …
I’ve already typed up an Honor case referral for you. I’m going to tell you why. We have your questionnaire here and you answered no to a lot of questions, and then specifically with the chores, you responded, yes. … Ironically, most if not all new members had the same responses, including the statement that was made in the [unintelligible] response question. Your commanding officer is copied on it on the bottom.
I can rip this up and make it go away for you. I can’t necessarily make it go away for other new members at this point, or other active members at this point. They might be too far gone at this point. Elizabeth and I just sent 35 members of another chapter to UJC. We’re also sending another 15 new members to Honor potentially. That’s not something we like to do. Ten of them were graduating this semester. That’s really, really bad. You have the opportunity now to avoid that. And people in the other chapters thought I was bullshitting them. I was not. They were terminated from the campus, and all of them were sent to UJC. All of them had to hire lawyers. All of them needed different types of representation. Their parents came down. Elizabeth and I have been meeting with them the past week about all this.
I don’t want to do that with you, [name withheld]. But we’ve got to stop the funny business. And we have to start having real conversations. This is the time to be smart and think about yourself, [name withheld], and your future. I really don’t want to send people…. especially you, and I am going to single you out here, as well as one of your other brothers that I believe is in ROTC. This will be tough for you in my experience. The thing that someone did — and I worked at Ohio State, that’s where I went to school, that was the first student conduct job I had — what the cadet did was relatively minor, and they got discharged.
So, here are the allegations we have confirmed.
Here, Golich read the particulars enumerated in the Hazing Misconduct Report, and then continued:
I’m just here to kind of clear your head. That’s what we’re really here to do — give you that chance so you don’t throw your ROTC career potentially away, or put yourself of being at risk of that being the case. So, let’s be brutally honest here. Do you think you can do that?
STUDENT: Mm hmm.
GOLICH: So, let’s walk through the first part about line-up. The quizzing of information. Tell us more about that.
STUDENT: I’ve never been quizzed on the information, but frat life, it’s part of the resolute journey that they want you to learn the creed. And I want to learn the creed, too. I love the people. It’s part of the brotherhood I want to be connected to. Honestly, I’ve been kind of slacking a bit. … I’ve been trying to balance ROTC, the frat, and also school, and also have a social life outside of the frat. So, I’ve missed a ton of … chapter meetings.
GOLICH: [Name withheld], stop. We are beyond the point of putting on the show. I also know you guys have been coached about what to say during these meetings. You all say a very similar thing. That’s not normal.
STUDENT: We say similar things probably because —
GOLICH: No, it’s not probably because that’s what happens. That’s not normal. Everyone has a different way of going about their words and how they say things. You guys are saying things almost to the “t.” You are picking the wrong pathway now. You are picking the wrong path. I’m not bullshitting you. It’s already typed up. I have — what is it? — your commanding officer of naval ROTC copied on this. I don’t care. I will submit it to him because you will need to learn a hard lesson. You’re naive still, you’re young. Maybe you’re not cut out to be in the navy.
No seriously. The commonwealth’s attorney was notified about this behavior such that a police investigation is probably going to be ensuing very soon. So, that’s already probably going to put you in some hot water with Naval ROTC because you’re going to be the subject of a police investigation. This is not helping because you’re going to be adding, one, honor charges, two, I might even add obstruction of the student conduct system with UJC, so you’ll have to go to two boards. Because I can do that, too.
STUDENT: I think it’s kind of odd. Maybe my story is completely different than some of the other kids because —
GOLICH: No, it’s not. It’s not.
STUDENT: I don’t [unintelligible] the frat a lot. I was the last person–
GOLICH: That’s an easy alibi that a lot of people have tried to take. You’re not special.
STUDENT: The alibi is true. I’m very involved. I’m on the Operation Smile club here. I’m in ROTC–
GOLICH: This stuff happened. … I’m not bullshitting you. I don’t care. I will send you to Honor, and I will sleep at night just fine, even if it has harsh consequences for you because I know I held someone accountable, and they’re going to learn a life lesson. You don’t need to be that person, [name withheld]. You don’t need to be the tough guy. …
I’m just going to send you to Honor because I don’t want to waste my time any more with you. I’m going to be honest. I already have your responses in a questionnaire. I already have evidence proving, that several people have corroborated what has occurred, which is different from what you wrote. You can deal with the Honor Committee and see what they think about you because I’m done with people like you. I don’t fuck around.
You think your ROTC commander is tough? Guess what. You guys have met your match. I’m going to ask for a suspension of you probably. That will be my making of amends with you. Because I seriously don’t want you on the Grounds. I think you are a threat to the health and safety of other people on this campus, and how you act. So, my amends are going to be temporary removal from Grounds. That’s what I’m going to ask for. And I’m going to ask for that for several other people.
I went to law school. I’m a little bit more trained and learned than a lot of you guys. I know what I’m doing. I’ve worked for two prosecuting attorneys. This is nothing. I’ve dealt with people who are dealing with aggravated assault, someone who killed someone. This is nothing to me. This is easy. You guys have so many tells.
What we don’t know
The Golich recording is shocking. It’s not what we expect of a university investigator diligently trying to ascertain the truth. Golich put a student in fear of losing his scholarship, going before the Honor Committee, going before the University Judiciary Committee, and getting sucked into police investigation. We get the impression of a rogue prosecutor willing to go to any lengths to rack up another conviction.
But there is much we don’t know. We don’t have the full recording. This version contains excerpts only, so we don’t know what was edited out. We haven’t seen the questionnaire Golich alluded to, and we don’t know how the frat boys responded. We don’t know if they were coached or bent the truth. We don’t know if Golich followed through on his threats to refer dozens of kids to Honor and the student judiciary. We don’t know if he informed the student’s ROTC commander.
Were there double standards at work? We don’t know if Golich bore into the pro-Palestinian students with the same zeal he showed with Theta Chi. We don’t know if his pursuit of charges against the protesters was overridden by higher-ups in the UVA bureaucracy.
What we do know
We do know that the Fraternal Organization Agreement between Theta Chi and the University was terminated and that the Theta Chi brothers were forbidden to reconstitute themselves in another form.
We know that nine other Greek organizations (and two student clubs) have been warned or sanctioned by the University in the past three years.
By contrast, we know that student protesters suffered no sanction beyond a delay in receiving their degrees. We also know that no militant student group — the Dissenters, the Students for Justice in Palestine, the other organizers of anti-Israel demonstrations — have been sanctioned for urging members to wear face masks in violation of state law or creating a hostile environment for Jews. We also know that University officials have defended their non-action on the grounds that, well, local prosecutors wouldn’t act on masking violations anyway, so there isn’t any point.
We also know that the aggressive actions against fraternities are part of a larger pattern.
We know that med school student Kieren Bhattacharya underwent a disciplinary review because attendees of a micro-aggressions seminar were offended when he challenged the speaker.
We know that fourth-year student Morgan Bettinger was persecuted when her words were misconstrued as a threat to Black Lives Matter demonstrators. She was subjected to student judicial proceedings, and she was punished. We also know that President Jim Ryan refused to clear her name when evidence surfaced that there was no evidence to support the allegations made against her. We know that when she sued the University, the University settled. We know that Bettinger’s chief tormenter suffered no sanction for spreading falsehoods and is a graduate student in good standing at UVA to this day.
The Jefferson Council knows of an employee who was hauled before Title IX inquisitors and interrogated for giving an offense to a minority club that was violating university rules (which we’re not at liberty to disclose).
And we know of the letter with 128 signatories (the number of which has grown) alleging that School of Medicine officials threaten employees with retaliation and keep records in their files of violations of med school “values.”
Judging by outcomes, there is a mountain of evidence that University officials apply very different standards to different groups, favoring some and condemning others. By itself, the audio recording of Donovan Golich does not prove that those outcomes represent preferential application of practices and processes. But if such bullying behavior is shown to be the norm for some types of students and not others, UVA has a very big problem.
James A. Bacon is the founder of Bacon’s Rebellion and a contributing editor with The Jefferson Council.
