The U.S. Department of Education has scheduled a December hearing to take up Virginia Tech's appeal of fines it received for failing to notify campus sooner during a 2007 shooting rampage in which a student killed 32 students and faculty.
Department spokeswoman Sara Gast says the hearing will be held Dec. 7-9. Several survivors and victims' family members plan to testify.
Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli announced in April that the school would appeal the $55,000 sanction, calling the department's findings "absolutely appalling."
The agency found Virginia Tech violated a federal campus safety law by waiting more than two hours after two students were killed before sending out a campus-wide warning. By that time, the gunman was chaining shut the doors to a building where he killed 30 more and then himself.
