Dear University of Cambridge,

I read in the Guardian last week that one of the university's students was suspended for two and a half years by the university's court of discipline. Reading the university's statutes that govern this court I see that the court is required to give the student a reasoned decision in writing. Please send me a copy of this reasoned decision, in electronic form, to this e-mail address.

I was curious about how the university courts handled similar cases, so I looked through the Reporter to see what other cases the courts had dealt with in the recent past. The only case I could find that might just possibly be similar was a case before the summary court on 27 June 2011 concerning two charges "relating to offences contrary to the general regulations for discipline", although no detail is given on the circumstances of this case:

http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/2010...

Reading the regulations that govern the summary court, I see that that student should have received a notice of the charges and a statement of facts of the case, and the student could then have submitted in writing any facts they wanted the court to consider. Please supply, in electronic form to this e-mail address, the notice of the charges, the statement of facts, any submissions made to the court by or for the student, and any records of the court's decision and deliberations (other than what is published in the Reporter at the link above).

If it would not exceed the cost limit, please also supply, in electronic form to this e-mail address, a list of cases handled by the university courts, since 1 January 2002, where any of the charges considered by the court resulted from the actions of the defendant in connection with a protest or demonstration. Please include with the list brief details of the charges and the verdict.

Yours faithfully,

C. Bradley

Dear University of Cambridge,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of University of Cambridge's handling of my FOI request 'University courts' decisions'.

I can understand that the first item I requested - the reasoned decision of the court of discipline in respect of the case of the student suspended for two and a half years last month - might contain a certain amount of personal data that might be unfair to release and could not be anonymised. However, it seems implausible that all of this decision could be regarded as personal data. If, for instance, the court justified its decision, at least in part, using legal, moral or other principles, I would expect that those parts of the decision could be supplied. I therefore would ask that decision not to supply any part of the reasoned decision be reviewed.

With respect to the case before the summary court, if all the information I've requested is personal data that it is unfair to release then I do not understand how the report of the case in the Reporter:

http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/2010...

would not also be personal data that it would be unfair to have released. Therefore, once again I think that some parts of what I have asked for should be released, particularly any which refer to general principles used by the court in their consideration of the case, or any facts not directly connected to the defendant (for instance, the time and place where the offences occurred).

Finally, with respect to the list I requested, it clearly is the case that the University must hold at least a partial list, since there is at least the case of the suspended student reported by the Guardian last month. I therefore take your response to mean that the university does not hold an explicit list of such cases. However, I believe that is irrelevant, since I presume the university must hold details of all the cases heard by its courts since 1 January 2002. Thus my request for a list was a request for a "digest or summary" of information that is held by the university and so I ask that the decision not to provide it be reviewed. In undertaking this review, the reviewer might also wish to take into account paragraphs 10-16 of the following decision of the information tribunal:

http://www.informationtribunal.gov.uk/DB...

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/un...

Yours faithfully,

C. Bradley