@fallenchemist Sure, there are all kinds of issues involved, including prohibitions against arbitrary and capricious decisions and the University’s obligation to follow their own policies as well as an expectation of due process.
However, private colleges are far more flexible than public institutions in what they can do to deal with things they see as issues or disruptions. Students who think that their rights trump everything can be surprised.
In this particular case, there are two students in question. Obviously, they both have rights. IF no accommodation could be reached, and one had to go, I guarantee you that one would be gone. And, considering the current Title IX atmosphere, I would be very surprised if it was the victim of sexual violence.
Nycparent, realize that in California law a person who is extremely intoxicated-- not unconscious, but intoxicated— cannot legally consent to sex. Occidental didn’t just make up this idea from whole cloth. Both of those students made mistakes that night, and if he had accused her, which he did not, she might have also been determined to have been at fault.
I have now read through this thread in its entirety. I have never done this before, but I am banning JustOneDad from this thread, as his arguments seem to be designed only to inflame and antagonize. They have no legitimacy in law or in common sense. If he posts again, please report it. I realize this is extreme and rare, but this case rises to this level of action, IMO as moderator.
It seems that according to Title IX, the school can issue a no-contact order,which in this case should have been swiftly removed when he was cleared
While the school has to be responsible for not creating a “hostile environment” and cannot , according to this article, encourage the accuser to take time off from school, seems to me they have an equal responsibility to to create a hostile environment for the accused.
@cardinalfang, Ok, that makes sense. So, he might have been better off if he had accused her of assaulting him, because then there would be competing claims about lack of consent, whereas since he did not, his can only argue that he was treated differently because his impairment should have been taken into account in evaluating whether he was able to understand her lack of consent. But most likely, that’s not going to cut it, since his being drunk is not relevant to his responsibility for evaluating and ensuring consent, only to his ability to give consent himself.
If it was a case involving two women, both intoxicated, both consenting, and both later claiming that they had been too drunk to give actual consent, would both be subject to expulsion? Or two men?
Anyway, I feel badly for the former Occidental students who completely messed up their lives by their excessive drinking in the very beginning of freshman year. I do think that the prevalence of alcohol in this story is important. Obviously this is not the case with the story from Oregon, which is too absurd to yield any kind of useful insight.
There is no reason for this man to be punished for the actions of the rapist. I don’t care what the victim’s “feelings” are about this (though my heart goes out to her), her feelings/emotions do not invalidate someone else’s rights. Period!
Yet in the Occidental case there was nothing to stop the school from finding joint culpability, even if the boy did not accuse the girl of the same infraction, if the evidence was there and the school rules required it.
I agree, mom2and. I am not defending Occidental’s response. Some penalty short of expulsion would have been preferable, and possibly a penalty for both students if they determined that he also was too intoxicated to consent.
Occidental is not the only school that says they can discipline students for having sex with other students who are not unconscious, but who are extremely intoxicated. Yale has the same policy. When we read in Yale’s discipline reports of their finding that a male student had sex with a female student without consent, yet he is not expelled, I suspect that both students were very drunk. At first when I read those reports I thought, WHAT? Why is Yale not expelling those guys? But now I think there could be good reasons for their decisions about discipline.
I’m not Occidental, but if it were me making the decision, the genders of the two students would not be relevant. If the rule is that a person who is extremely drunk cannot consent to sex, that should be the rule no matter what the gender of two people involved.
I too am sorry that Halley used the Oregon story as an example. It seems to be an example, if it’s true, only of a college doing something incredibly stupid and ill-advised that nobody agrees with. Nothing in the Title IX letter comes within a light year of requiring a college to put restrictions on the movements of someone uninvolved in a sexual accusation. There are good examples of colleges’ questionable disciplinary actions. This is not one of them, because it’s so outrageous that it’s just wrong.
Here’s my theory on what Halley left out of her description of the lookalike case: the rapidity with which the restrictions were lifted once word of the issue made it to sensible decisionmakers. She doesn’t tell us the rest of the story, and I suspect that’s why. I can imagine a student not taking too many steps when he’s told that he’s under investigation–if it were my kid, I’d probably consult a lawyer, and take advantage of whatever protections the school allows, but you’re probably going to have to let the investigation take its course, and probably you acquiesce to restrictions during the investigation, if it doesn’t take too long. But it would significantly up the ante if and when I learned that it was all about the fact that my kid resembles somebody else. I wouldn’t sit still for that–and it appears like these people didn’t, either.
Re: post 295: see this about the CU Boulder student sexual misconduct case and see what happens when the police decide that the case is meritless and the university continues it’s investigation and disciplinary action. I find it difficult to understand how CU Boulder persisted in this instance and why they got off for such a measly amount.
My guess-- because CU has the goods on the guy and is not willing to back down. Notice that if he applies to another school, he’ll probably have to disclose that he was disciplined. If they require him to sign a waiver allowing the school to disclose the offense and he does sign, CU will tell the other school that he was disciplined for non-consensual sex.
The police not prosecuting doesn’t mean they think the case is meritless. It may mean they think they can’t get a conviction, which is completely different from the case being meritless.
