A state judge in Oklahoma ruled this month that Rogers State University wrongfully expelled a student whom officials had accused of computer hacking.
Now the former student, Joshua M. Fellman, has filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit over the incident, alleging religious discrimination and false arrest and imprisonment by university officials.
Mr. Fellman, 21, was kicked off the Claremore, Okla., campus at the end of his sophomore year in August 2002 over accusations that he had downloaded and used keystroke-capturing software to gain remote access to administrators’ computers and to discover students’ network passwords.
Mr. Fellman appealed his expulsion to the District Court of Rogers County, where Judge Dwayne J. Steidley ruled in his favor, finding the expulsion “erroneous and arbitrary and capricious.”
The judge sent the case back to the university’s Committee on Student Conduct “for further consideration of a lesser sanction” against Mr. Fellman. The committee had supported the decision by Brett Campbell, dean of students, to expel Mr. Fellman.
Judge Steidley also ordered the university to expunge all records of the dispute from Mr. Fellman’s student file.
Observers say it is rare for a court to overturn a college’s decision in a campus judicial matter. “The courts almost always stay out of college affairs,” says C.L. Lindsay, executive director of the Coalition for Student and Academic Rights, a group of students, professors, and lawyers that promotes constitutional rights in academe.
Rogers State released a statement saying it would immediately appeal the ruling.
“This matter has been exclusively about the review of prohibited computer hacking and other inappropriate uses of the state-owned computing system that could have jeopardized the rights of other students and employees and compromised the integrity of the university computing network,” the statement said. University officials declined to comment further.
Accusation of Retaliation
Mr. Fellman says he was expelled because administrators sought to retaliate against him for openly criticizing their firing of his friend, Matthew Bickford, a former student who had worked for the university’s academic-computing services.
Both Mr. Fellman, who worked for the distance-learning office, and Mr. Bickford would close their e-mail messages with “God Bless” and scriptural verses, says Mr. Fellman’s lawyer, Bill E. Kumpe, of Tulsa, Okla. Mr. Bickford was fired after he challenged a computing administrator’s order to employees to stop using “personal and religious sentiments” in their campus e-mail messages, according to Mr. Fellman’s lawsuit.
Mr. Fellman and other students in the Baptist Campus Ministries told local Baptist congregants that Mr. Bickford was a victim of religious persecution, says Mr. Kumpe. Mr. Fellman could not be reached for comment.
In court documents, Mr. Fellman says that before he was expelled, he, his sister, and Mr. Bickford were removed from classes at Rogers State, kept in custody for more than three hours by an armed campus-security officer, and interrogated by Mr. Campbell and other administrators.
While in custody, Mr. Fellman says, he was “repeatedly threatened with expulsion, criminal charges, and other dire consequences if he refused to confess to vague and unspecified charges of computer-use violations.”
He says he was not allowed to make a telephone call or communicate with a lawyer, and “was not advised of his right to remain silent or his right to have an attorney present during questioning.”
Mr. Fellman’s lawsuit also says that university officials had conspired against him “based upon Mr. Fellman’s chosen religious expression and practice.”
In each of four counts cited in the lawsuit -- false arrest, detention and confinement, conspiracy, and neglecting to control administrators -- Mr. Fellman seeks $500,000 in compensatory damages and $500,000 in punitive damages. Mr. Fellman is now enrolled at Oklahoma’s Northeastern State University, but under Judge Steidley’s ruling is free to return to Rogers State.
Mr. Kumpe and another Tulsa lawyer representing Mr. Fellman are affiliated with the Alliance Defense Fund, an organization based in Scottsdale, Ariz., that says it promotes “religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and traditional family values.”
Timothy A. Norris, an investigator for the Claremore Police Department, says Rogers State spent more than $30,000 to correct the damage caused by Mr. Fellman’s and Mr. Bickford’s alleged hacking. The money was used for, among other things, repairing damage to network fire walls.
Mr. Norris also says his department referred the case to the FBI after the Rogers County District Attorney’s Office told him it was ill-equipped to investigate cybercrime. FBI officials say they have no comment on the case.
http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Volume 50, Issue 29, Page A34