Virginia Tech is appealing a $55,000 fine from the Department of Education for violating federal law by waiting too long to notify students during the 2007 massacre on the Blacksburg campus.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said the school isn’t appealing because of the monetary penalty but to “compel the DOE to treat Virginia Tech fairly and to apply a very poorly defined and subjectively applied federal law consistently and correctly.” His office sent the department a letter announcing the appeal Wednesday.
The DOE announced the fine last month, saying the university was too slow in notifying the campus about a gunman after two students were shot in a dormitory on April 16, 2007. The $55,000 fine was the maximum the school could receive for its violations of the Clery Act, the federal law that governs the information colleges must disclose about campus crime.
Cuccinelli criticized the department’s investigation, saying federal authorities never talked to university officials and has stonewalled the school’s attempts to get documents about its findings the case.
“All in all, it amounts to an outrageous denial of due process,” he said.
The university has maintained that it acted appropriately given the information available.
After the first two slayings, gunman Seung-Hui Cho went on to kill another 30 people before turning the gun on himself in the deadliest shooting rampage on a college campus in U.S. history.
“In the real world, events unfold quickly, and the full context often becomes clear only later,” Cuccinelli said.
