From the Community | Now is the time to fix the Office of Community Standards

Stanford has a new leadership team, so now is the time to address a years’ long problem at the Office of Community Standards (OCS) that has been an affront to the core values of our University for at least 15 years. To her credit, Provost Jenny Martinez has already acted aggressively, recently appointing law professor Larry Marshall as Interim Director at OCS. Marshall has the requisite background, and skill sets to bring about needed changes. Members of both the undergraduate and graduate senate have also taken up the cause this school year. 

In 2011, two other alumni and I represented three students in a cheating case processed through what was then Stanford’s Judicial Affairs Office (JAO; now known as the OCS). 

All of our three clients were acquitted in November 2011. As their representatives, all of whom have substantial administrative law experience, we were appalled at the inability of JAO employees to follow the University’s Judicial Charter and provide any semblance of a fair hearing. 

Our group of alumni volunteered to work with the JAO to improve their systems. They referred the matter to the Office of the General Counsel headed, then and now, led by Deborah Zumwalt. The attorney assigned to work with us said that General Counsel’s Office would be pleased to do so if we all started with the same predicate which she described as: “This is a discipline system designed to correct bad behavior.” 

The problem with her predicate is that it reflects a presumption of guilt of anyone that goes into the system. Our three students were all acquitted. Why were they in what the University referred to then, and even oftentimes now, as a “discipline system”? 

We were so troubled by the despicable treatment of the students, and this presumption of guilt that permeated the processing of these cases, that we prepared a 62-page, single spaced Case Study of that case identifying 99 distinct errors, mistakes or violation of student rights in the course of OCS’s handling of the matter.

Only when it became clear that administrators and others had no interest in improving the system, did we provide the Case Study to The Stanford Daily, 18 months after we first started our efforts to make that process fair. The Daily highlighted the Case Study in a front-page story on May 13, 2013. 

We took the undisputed facts of that Case Study to every level of the University, including the Provost and the President, as well as select Trustees. With no interest from anyone, we issued our second report entitled: 2013 Internal Review of Stanford University’s Office of Judicial Affairs. Both reports are still online. 

In the second report we shined a spotlight on everyone in the University who failed to act on well-documented serious problems at the JAO. So no one could minimize the impact this office had on students, we included 24 testimonials written by students or their representatives. Each, in their own way, described the trauma they experienced in this unfair process. 

Realizing that no one at the University wanted to fix the problem, we offered to recruit, train and supervise Stanford alumni lawyers to offer every student free representation from the minute they entered Stanford’s “disciplinary system.” That was the summer of 2013. Twelve years later, administrators still have not responded to this generous offer. 

In the 2021-22 school year, Stanford student Katie Meyer was involved in a seven-month OCS investigation. She took her own life in March 2022, the night she received a charge letter from that office. In the ESPN documentary that aired in May of this year (“Save: The Katie Meyer Story”) her family shared that her laptop was opened to the letter from the OCS when she took her last breath. 

We have worked with many students over the last three years. By July 2025, things appeared to be even worse at OCS than in 2022, when Katie was literally scared to death by that office. All sorts of personality disputes are being processed at OCS. Statutes of limitations are ignored. Students are sometimes given as little as five minutes to present their entire case. It is absurd. 

The 2023 Student Conduct Charter in our view is far more punitive to students than the 1977 Judicial Charter. The new charter did all of the following: 

• Decreased the burden of proof to obtain most convictions.
• Reduced the percentage of panelists needed to convict.
• Accused students now are entitled to receive only the incriminating evidence utilized by OCS to determine that a charge should be filed. Previously, accused students were entitled to all exculpatory evidence. 
• Under the 2023 Charter, OCS insists that there will be no in-person hearings. All will be by Zoom. 

Those of us who practice administrative law believe that a culture continues to permeate OCS that presumes guilt and therefore drives students to plead guilty. If there is no plea, the system appears designed to drive cases to a guilty verdict. Thus, the office that was originally designed to police and protect the core values of the University itself is in violation of those very values. 

Students are transitory. Alumni are not. Our group is still here, and we have now spent 14 years trying to protect students. We ought to be able to resolve the myriad of issues at OCS without asking the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to initiate a full scale investigation. 

A wrongful conviction at OCS goes on a student’s permanent record. That wrongful conviction then has the potential to destroy your life dreams before you even have a chance to pursue them. 

Bob Ottilie ’77 is a San Diego attorney who was a founder of the Student Justice Project and a long-time advocate for Stanford students. If you would like to help, contact him at ro@ottilielaw.com.

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