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*Take action* plus update - Statute 18 under threat again
8 July 2019
This is a short message to update colleagues following Friday's message about Statute 18.
We are pleased to report that on Friday, lawyers acting for UCL finally agreed a suitable date which will allow the member to appear with a representative of their choosing in front of a UCL Statute 18 Disciplinary Tribunal, and allow their principal witness to attend.
However UCL has made no concession of the principle we highlighted in this case. They have not accepted that they acted in error in asserting that Paragraph 17 of Statute 18 was not binding.
Given that the few lines of Paragraph 17 are the only parameters of a hearing process used in gross misconduct academic dismissal cases, this question is clearly a serious matter!
In this particular case, it took UCL five months to finally agree an appropriate hearing date. The academic member of staff in question had to engage in lengthy and costly legal correspondence with UCL over this period just to force UCL to agree to follow its own Statute. Clearly this is untenable, and must not be repeated in the future.
For this reason we have launched a petition to the Provost and Chair of Council which we ask members to sign. As we commented on Friday, defence of Statute 18 is about defending the research environment and ethos of UCL. Following a preamble, it ends with the following:
“"We the undersigned pledge to defend Statute 18. We do not agree that Paragraph 17, or any other part of Statute 18, is merely 'guidance'. We call on the Provost and Chair of Council to instruct their lawyers accordingly, and to provide confirmation in writing to UCU and the UCL community that UCL senior management will stand by and fully implement the wording of the Statute in each and every case going forward."