After Katie Meyer’s death, Stanford alumni criticize disciplinary process

A group of Stanford University alumni released documents on Wednesday alleging that the university has routinely failed to protect students during disciplinary proceedings, which they say may have resulted in the death by suicide of Stanford student and star soccer player Katie Meyer.

The alumni, led by Bob Ottilie, argue that Meyer would be alive today if Stanford had agreed to a proposal from the the Stanford Justice Project in 2012 to provide free alumni lawyers to every student going through the university’s disciplinary system.

The proposal was taken to the highest levels of Stanford University administration but was ultimately ignored, according to Ottilie.

“Because the school’s disciplinary regime is so extreme, Stanford students should have access to legal representation,” said Ottilie, adding that it would provide students with a level playing field and also emotional support.

The Stanford Justice Project was created in 2012 by a coalition of Stanford University students, their parents and alumni after “egregious violations of the 1997 Student Judicial Charter [were] first discovered” in 2011, according to the project’s website.

The project’s 2012 report, co-authored by Ottilie, called for students to have access to free legal assistance through pro bono attorneys or alumni while navigating the disciplinary process. It said: “In the criminal system, the lowest potential infraction (a noise complaint, for example) allows representation by an attorney. Yet, a student can be suspended from school, something that will be carried with him or her for the rest of their life, and Stanford says they cannot have an attorney. Enough already.”

Ottilie, a Stanford alumnus, is a practicing attorney in San Diego who has handled student cases all over the United States for more than three decades. He said he volunteered to recruit, train and coordinate free alumni lawyers but that the university ignored his  offer.

Stanford University officials were not immediately available for comment.

Ottilie said Meyer might be alive today had the university taken the 2012 recommendations seriously. A 22-year-old senior at Stanford and a member of the school’s 2019 national champion women’s soccer team, she was found dead in her dorm room on March 1. She was facing a disciplinary hearing at the time.

Ottilie said that, if Meyer was given legal aid, she could have resolved her case, set her mind at ease, and secured her academic and athletic future.

If the circumstances are as he understands them, Ottilie said, Meyer’s matter “would have been the least significant student disciplinary issue I had ever addressed at a college or university level.”

“It does not appear to have been a big deal at all,” he went on, but “being all alone in what even Stanford has admitted is a punitive process, she believed it was.”

On NBC’s Today show after their daughter’s death, Steven and Gina Meyer said they believe she had recently gotten an email from the university about the disciplinary action.

Her father said it arose from her “defending a teammate on campus over an incident.”

“She had been getting letters for a couple months,” Gina Meyer said. “This letter was kind of the final letter that there was going to be a trial or some kind of something. This is the only thing that we can come up with that triggered something.”

Steven and Gina Meyer started an initiative called Katie’s Save after her suicide, to implement a policy similar to Ottilie’s. They want to see a designated advocate for students who find themselves in the same position their daughter was in.

The Stanford Justice Project released a second report in 2013, including  24 testimonials from students and parents  describing the traumatizing impact of navigating the Stanford disciplinary process alone.