campus security: [july 2008]
Published: 06/02/2008
- Texas Court's Ruling in Bonfire Case Opens New Liability Worries for Campuses
From the article of the same title by: none, Chronicle of Higher Education - A Texas court recently permitted a negligence lawsuit to continue against 12 former Texas A&M University administrators, raising many questions in the higher-education community about whether campus officials can be held liable in a variety of incidents. The Texas case dates back to 1999, when a 59-foot-high pile of logs to be used in building a bonfire on the College Station campus fell to the ground, killing 12 and hurting 27. The university itself cannot be sued because it is protected by the doctrine of sovereign immunity, which maintains that governments and their agencies, including public colleges, are immune from civil lawsuits and criminal prosecution. However, this doctrine does not protect administrators. Last fall, Rutgers University's School of Management and Labor Relations hosted a Web seminar on the growing number of lawsuits against college officials, especially at public institutions. "It raises the question we all struggle with: To what degree is the institution responsible for monitoring the behavior of people who are legally adults? Does the administrator have a responsibility to protect students from their own risky behavior?" asked Barbara A. Lee, a professor of human-resource management at Rutgers. Darrell Keith, a Fort Worth lawyer representing a few of the plaintiffs in the Texas A&M case, said that administrators are at fault because they should have asked faculty members with knowledge in engineering and architecture to guide the students on how to properly construct the bonfire. The fact that they did not do so, according to Keith, makes them personally liable.
Read more >
