WAR ON COLLEGE MEN (CONT’D): School admits to excluding witness that could have proved accused student was innocent.

Jonathan Dorfman was accused in 2011 of cheating on a test.

The “evidence” against him consisted of a changed letter at the top of the test — indicating Dorfman had changed what exam version he was taking — and a theory from a professor at a different school that statistics showed Dorfman couldn’t have had so many wrong answers in common with another student, referred to as “Student X.” The school alleged that Dorfman copied off of Student X.

But UCSD refused to identify Student X to Dorfman. The school wouldn’t even verify where Student X was sitting in relation to Dorfman. The test was administered in different classrooms, so Student X could have been sitting next to Dorfman, or across the room, or in a different room completely, meaning it was entirely possible that Dorfman didn’t copy off of Student X’s test.

Dorfman has been trying to clear his name for years, and a judge is about to determine whether the school will be allowed to try Dorfman one more time (perhaps this time with the identity of Student X revealed).

At Dorfman’s second hearing (both his first and second hearing decisions were thrown out by the schools provosts and a state trial judge), he argued against his accuser (his professor), by noting “40 other instances” of tests with as many matching answers as his and Student X’s.

He said half of those matches came from students “who were sitting in different classrooms.” Despite this, the school still found him responsible and expelled him, using the low “preponderance of evidence” standard.

The reason Student X’s identity was never revealed, UCSD said, was that Student X wasn’t “relevant” to the investigation because he or she wasn’t also being charged with cheating. This is not how “relevant party” is defined in UCSD’s policies, however, which merely state that a relevant party is “one with direct and material understanding of the allegation.”

Good grief.