Ronnie Higgs, the Vice President of Student Affairs at California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB) has been charged with domestic violence. President Ochoa’s office sent students an email Friday afternoon to transparently share information about the case.
“The university has learned that domestic violence charges have been filed against Dr. Ronnie Higgs, CSUMB Vice President for Student Affairs and Enrollment Services, involving his spouse at a site off campus in Carmel,” read the email. “We are concerned about the scope of the charges facing Dr. Higgs, and we want to ensure our community that we take these matters seriously, while also respecting the personal privacy rights of all involved, as the legal process moves forward.”
The email also addressed Higgs’s administrative leave. It read that he was “placed on administrative leave pending a review of the facts and circumstances involved in this private marital matter.” According to the email, Provost Katherine Kantardjieff will oversee Higgs’s duties as he takes leave.
According to the Carmel Valley Pine Cone Higgs was arrested Oct. 23 for “abuse and kidnapping his wife.”
Sgt. Jeff Watkins spoke on the situation to the Carmel Valley Pine Cone and said that Higgs had found his wife drinking with friends in Carmel and “forced her against her will into his automobile and drove her home.”
Following the message from Ochoa’s office and thereafter reading about the situation in the Carmel Valley Pine Cone, third-year transfer student Nikki Dodd said she felt “shocked and disturbed” about Higgs’s arrest.
Dodd added that “CSUMB is handling it as best as any school could [as] they informed us clearly when they had enough information to do so and gave us a clear plan of what they plan to do now.”