Clark Atlanta University engineering student Yemaya Stallworth sat in a Georgia courtroom Tuesday trying to make sense of the school’s attempts to shut down its engineering program.
“It hurts me very much,” said Stallworth, a 21-year-old junior electrical engineering major. “The biggest thing that angers me is it’s our own people doing it to us.”
The Georgia Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in the case involving a group of CAU students and faculty who are hoping to prevent the closing of the school’s engineering department.
The student and faculty group say CAU officials, specifically president Walter Broadnax, didn’t follow procedures when they decided in 2003 to shut down the now 13-year-old engineering program.
Part of that process would have allowed more input in the decision.
The group is arguing that, had school officials followed proper procedures, it’s unlikely the department would have been shut down.
“We’re not asking the court to intervene with the decisions of the university,” the group’s attorney, Gina Mangham, told the seven justices. “What we’re asking you to do is to make the university enforce its contractual obligations to the students and the faculty.”
