Due Process, Fundamental Fairness, and Judicial Deference: The Illusory Difference Between State and Private Educational Institution Disciplinary Legal Requirements

[Excerpt] “The educational process at a college or university, where students often experience new-found freedom, includes adherence to academic and behavioral standards. The institution may impose sanctions on students for breaching these standards. Prior to imposing a sanction, however, an institution must provide the student with a sufficient level of process or risk judicial invalidation of the sanction. Courts distinguish the process due a student attending a state institution from the process due a student attending a private institution. Related to this distinction is the judicial claim that courts grant discretion to a private institution’s judgment regarding discipline for academic, as opposed to behavioral, matters. However, as actually applied, the difference between the process due students at state institutions and those at private institutions is questionable. Furthermore, the actual discretion afforded to private institutions for their academic-violation processes is similarly questionable. This article will analyze five issues related to the distinction between state and private institution disciplinary proceedings. First, this article will analyze the process due a sanctioned student at a private institution. Second, it will compare the process due a sanctioned student at a private institution with the process due a student at a state institution and assert that the practical differences are small. Third, it will analyze the judicial claim that more discretion is afforded private institutions in academic disciplinary matters and assert that this discretion is applied inconsistently between courts. Fourth, this article will present the judicial doctrines regarding review of a private institution’s behavioral disciplinary proceedings. Finally, this article will provide recommendations to private institutions regarding disciplinary policy creation and implementation.

Degenerate 3-dimensional Sklyanin algebras are monomial algebras

The 3-dimensional Sklyanin algebras, S(a,b,c), over a field k, form a flat family parametrized by points (a,b,c) lying in P^2-D, the complement of a set D of 12 points in the projective plane, P^2. When (a,b,c) is in D the algebras having the same defining relations as the 3-dimensional Sklyanin algebras are said to be "degenerate". Chelsea Walton showed the degenerate 3-dimensional Sklyanin algebras do not have the same properties as the non-degenerate ones. Here we prove that a degenerate Sklyanin algebra is isomorphic to the free algebra on u,v,w, modulo either the relations u^2=v^2=w^2=0 or the relations uv=vw=wu=0. These monomial algebras are Zhang twists of each other. Therefore all degenerate Sklyanin algebras have the same category of graded modules. A number of properties of the degenerate Sklyanin algebras follow from this observation. We exhibit a quiver Q and an ultramatricial algebra R such that if S is a degenerate Sklyanin algebra then the categories QGr(S), QGr(kQ), and Mod(R), are equivalent; neither Q nor R depends on S. Here QGr(-) denotes the category of graded right modules modulo the full subcategory of graded modules that are the sum of their finite dimensional submodules

Category equivalences involving graded modules over path algebras of quivers

Let kQ be the path algebra of a quiver Q with its standard grading. We show that the category of graded kQ-modules modulo those that are the sum of their finite dimensional submodules, QGr(kQ), is equivalent to several other categories: the graded modules over a suitable Leavitt path algebra, the modules over a certain direct limit of finite dimensional multi-matrix algebras, QGr(kQ') where Q' is the quiver whose incidence matrix is the n^{th} power of that for Q, and others. A relation with a suitable Cuntz-Krieger algebra is established. All short exact sequences in the full subcategory of finitely presented objects in QGr(kQ), split so that subcategory can be given the structure of a triangulated category with suspension functor the Serre degree twist (-1); it is shown that this triangulated category is equivalent to the "singularity category" for the radical square zero algebra kQ/kQ_{\ge 2}.Comment: Several changes made as a result of the referee's report. Added Lemma 3.5 and Prop. 3.6 showing that O is a generato