It was a GOOD week for…
Exoneration, after charges dropped against Daniel Watkins, a third-year law student at University of Virginia, for assault and stalking. The charges had been filed in May after an altercation with his girlfriend. The judge ruled that Watkin’s alleged threats to kills his girlfriend if she ever dated another man were undermined by her testimony that she did not believe him at the time, and the judge ruled that he was not stalking her but happened to be in the same public places. Interestingly, Watkins’ law school friend, Johnathan Perkins, had admitted to a high-profile fabrication of police harassment in May. And Watkins, while the student body president as an undergraduate at Abilene Christian University in Texas, had reported finding a noose on his office chair, which led to an investigation but no arrests. He was later impeached as student body president for unrelated reasons.
It was a BAD week for …
Sticking out U.S. News controversy, after Larry Dessem, dean at University of Missouri-Columbia announced his resignation after 10 years at the helm of the law school. Dessem has been under criticism from students over the past two years for the school’s plummet in the U.S. News & World Report rankings. It has dropped from 59 in 2009 to 107 this year, the largest drop by any school over that period.
