I am not sure about the merits of your case (I could not read the transcript on the site and it is unclear to me what your grades are). I do think you have some valid points and will assume that you are correct in your position that you should not have been dismissed.

With that as a starting point, I think you have dug your heels in and have likely hurt your (presumed) goal of continuing your studies. Standing up and fighting for what you believe in and pointing out injustice are admirable qualities. But those qualities do not always comport with reaching your goals. I am not commenting on whether you were “right” or “wrong” in taking action. I just comment that you may have sacrificed getting the result you want.

On page 2 of the document you sent to the committee, you wrote that the committee asked you for several documents. It is unclear that you supplied those documents but you did spend about half a page telling them that their request was inappropriate and irrelevant. That may be the case, but remember, you were asking them to to re-instate you. Whether right or wrong, in order to maximize your chances, you should comply with their requests in a respectful manner (even if they are not deserving of that respect) if you want a positive response. I have to think the website does not help the esteem they hold you in (though, I am unclear when you set up the site in relation to your dismissal and subsequent appeals).

I think it comes down to a balancing of what goal is most important to you: 1) making the point about the injustices or 2) getting back into school. If the answer is number 2, I think you should consider doing anything to placate them. If the answer is number 1, then I guess you are already doing what you need to do. Not many people have the intestinal fortitude to pick number 1, so if this is your choice, then you are a rare individual. If number 2 is your goal, then you may not realize that you are likely going about this in the wrong way.

Good luck!

As for the dissenting views thing: I don’t say this anywhere on my site because I don’t think this is (now) the central issue here. Rather, we might ask ourselves a much more simple question, one that I made reference to in my “experiment.”

Namely, Would the Chancellor’s UCLA-going son/daughter ever be sent home permanently with these documents in hand?

I appreciate all the comments here, but it nonetheless seems clear to me from many of these posts that this simple question is quite invisible to the minds of many. And for good reason. Or else Volokh himself would simply have to tell us that he cannot participate in the central operations of his own distinguished university. And this rightly brings us back to the quotes by Chomsky and Graeber.

This statute comes into play, for instance, to prevent companies from reporting without permission that they have licensed technology from UC. The desired purpose, perhaps, is to prevent companies from representing their association as an endorsement by the university or state, but the law goes well beyond restating ordinary trademark rights.

If Mr. Wilde has a point, he fails to identify it.

There is no requirement that protected expression be effective, relevant or sensible. If FIRE defended this expression, my compliments. But FIRE’s reference to “dissenting views” makes no sense, so far as I can tell. Maybe it helps with fundraising.

Aren’t you misreading UCLA’s policy? UCLA requires “at least a ‘B’ (3.0) average“. First, I don’t see how the grade in one class could be seen as an average (i.e., it is only a single data point). Second, if a below-B grade was sufficient grounds for dismissal, why have a policy requiring an average? The first below-B grade would result in expulsion without regard to wehter the student’s gpa was below a 3.0.

This guy got a B- in one of his graduate courses. UCLA’s policy states (as provided on Tom Wilde’s website) that “UCLA requires at least a ‘B’ (3.0) average in all courses taken in graduate status at the University, and in all courses applied toward advanced degrees.” (emphasis added).

This is off topic, but what is the point of having C’s D’s and F’s if a B- will get you kicked out. At that point just make everything pass fail.

My grad school had a similar requirement that you had to get a B average to graduate and that for some specific core courses you had to get a B or higher to graduate. I knew a couple of people who had to retake those to get a B, but you did not get permanently kicked out if you got a C.

I tried very hard to find some idea of what views he was “weeded out” for holding, with no success. I also felt that the website was extraordinarily poorly designed, but if you want to attribute that to my poor browsing skills, I’ll accet that criticism.

Yeah it looks like he was “weeded” out because he had some incompletes and then after finishing them someone might have screwed up with his grade reporting. The giant Chomsky quotes make me suspect he might have annoyed the wrong administrator at some point, which made them reluctant to fix it if it was an honest mistake.

As someone who has worked in a government bureaucracy my advice when you have a problem with your records the best approach is to be very polite and understanding with the person you talk to since if it was an honest mistake then they are usually fine fixing it. Do not accuse them of harboring a grudge against you or your beliefs just because things do not go your way at first unless you have really solid evidence that this is the case since that just pisses them off.

I honestly don’t know where you are coming from. Do you have trouble navigating websites, or reading for comprehension, or are you perhaps affiliated with UCLA’s bureaucracy?

I tried very hard to find some idea of what views he was “weeded out” for holding, with no success. I also felt that the website was extraordinarily poorly designed, but if you want to attribute that to my poor browsing skills, I’ll accet that criticism.

he (1) was dismissed for poor grades

If you had actually read and understood his website you would realize that:

(1) the graduate school terminated him solely because his official transcript incorrectly suggested that his GPA was below 3.0;

(2) this transcript was in error because of bureaucratic errors by the graduate school;

(3) his grades were actually perfectly adequate according to published graduate school criteria;

(4)despite repeated communications by the student and his teachers the graduate school failed to rectify these errors and reinstate the student.

This is all thoroughly documented on the website in a way that is exceptionally easy to navigate. The student also writes more cogently than most of the grad students it has been my nmisfortune to teach in the last five years.

I honestly don’t know where you are coming from. Do you have trouble navigating websites, or reading for comprehension, or are you perhaps affiliated with UCLA’s bureaucracy?

I also believe he (1) was dismissed for poor grades rather than “dissenting views,” because the only dissent apparent from his website concerns the institutional decision to terminate his studies for inadequate grades and/or (2) has assembled a strikingly poor website.

Efforts like these are neccessary to maintain the current level of educational quality that so distinguishes the nation’s public schools.

You would think the attorneys in the UC Office of General Counsel would have learned their lesson.

What lesson? No heads rolled. No pink slips issued. Nobody got fined, or sent to jail as a result.

As long as the only consequence to being an officious thug is being required to occasionally stop being one, nothing will change.

FIRE suceeded in that case as well. http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/5231.html

You would think the attorneys in the UC Office of General Counsel would have learned their lesson.

When the use is commercial and likely to mislead reasonable consumers, for instance if someone sells T-shirts with the UCLA name in a context which leads people to falsely believe the sale is authorized by UCLA, that could indeed be punished. It’s possible that such commercial sales might even be punished if there’s a disclaimer announcing that the seller is entirely independent of the university.

There is a shop located near Duke University that sells (officially licensed) T-shirts and other items. It was, perhaps 20-25 years ago, called “The Duke Shop.” After the University complained and threatened to sue, the name was changed to “The Duck Shop.”