<p>As just reported in the Daily Princetonian: </p>
<p>Five months after what the accused male student describes as a "consensual" sexual encounter, the female plaintiff/student filed a complaint with the university which resulted in his suspension from the school until fall 2015. </p>
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According to the suit, both John and Jane Doe individually appealed to the University to reduce the sanction. Columbia ultimately denied the appeal.
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<p>This isn’t the first case against a school for violating due process and it won’t be the last, there’s a pretty prominent case against Swarthmore right now. And going the other way, heaven forbid a female accuse an athlete. Sexual assault is an actual crime - colleges need to get out of the cop business and start turning these cases over to law enforcement so that both sides are protected. For Columbia, I think the NYPD is equipped to handle it - they aren’t the Hooterville PD.</p>
<p>Columbia’s relations with the NYPD has a problematic history, mostly because of the student riots of 1968. After the riots and certainly into the 1980s, NYPD was essentially prohibited from entering the campus without first jumping through significant administrative hoops (CYA), emergencies excepted. This was the case even though the W. 116th Street promenade through the campus officially remains a NYC public thoroughfare (the university is permitted to prohibit/limit access only on occasions such as Commencement Day). Perhaps the administration has a different perspective on cooperation with the NYPD today.</p>
<p>The problem of adjudicating/investigating on-campus assaults seems to be mishandled, so I think MrMom62’s idea to immediately hand over such cases to the local police is be a good idea.</p>
<p>Columbia as a private property owner can prevent the NYPD from entering their property except in an emergency, but a sexual assault is a crime the NYPD has jurisdiction over, therefore, they just need to pass these complaints on to them and let them do their job. Why any college would want to handle a criminal investigation is beyond me, unless they’d prefer to keep it quiet - which may be the case. Given the current climate surrounding sexual assaults on campus, it seems to me the best policy for an administrator would be to wash their hands of it and tell students any complaints that look criminal in nature, sexual or not, will be handled by local police. Otherwise it’s a lose-lose position for the college.</p>
<p>MrMom62 I agree with you. If someone comes to the university claiming that someone has broken the law then it should be turned over to law enforcement for them to investigate and handle appropriately. I was wondering what the university’s legal right and responsibility is for handling a situation where someone is charged with a crime but not yet found guilty. Can they suspend them for the duration of the trial? If the accusation were say murder, the school would definitely not allow the student back on campus. It seems that Columbia’s culpability in this case is that they suspended a student for violating a law he had not been charged with. I don’t think they will win this, however, I’m not a lawyer or judge.</p>
<p>Cases like this are almost always settled out of court. We’ll likely never know the result.</p>
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Presumably, they have instituted these procedures because it’s the law. If a survivor of sexual assault doesn’t want to testify at a criminal trial, you can’t force them. Nor should you.
Does someone having sex with a person who has not literally used the word, “yes” to indicate permission sound like a criminal offence? I ask because that’s the sort of situation you’re asking a New York City district attorney to spend their time on.</p>
<p>If a person is unwilling to testify and face cross-examination, why should the accused face any punishment? Sorry, you don’t just get to claim sexual assault and then run away and insist that the person be punished. Just as I expect the authorities to act to the full extent of the law should my daughter ever be in this unfortunate situation, so too do I expect my son, should he ever be accused of such a crime, God-forbid, to be afforded all the rights he has under the criminal justice system, including the right to counsel and to face his accuser.</p>
<p>And yes, the New York District Attorney is expected to investigate such a situation.</p>
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<p>Would you rather have the police and courts be the ones to sort out whether the act in question was consensual (legal) or not (rape), or university administrations who are less well skilled and trained for this type of thing? And, in the case that someone is guilty of rape, the courts can give punishment like putting the rapist in prison, while university administrative punishments are too light for actual rapists, but still severe enough that a wrongly “convicted” person is significantly harmed.</p>
<p>Yes, police and courts do make errors in criminal cases, but do you really think that university administrations will be any better at getting the “correct” verdicts?</p>
<p>@MrMom62
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<p>So wait, you think every case of non-consensual sex should be punished by jail time? How long should the minimum sentence be?</p>
<p>Non-consensual sex. Isn’t that a nice way of saying rape? He took my TV non-consensually? He took my car non-consensually? It’s either a crime or it’s not. With theft and rape it’s up to the victim to press the charges.</p>
<p>Non-consensual sex should always have consequences, but it should be non-consensual at the time, not five months later after you’ve had time to think about it. And not all cases would lead to jail time, plenty of cases are plead out and have alternative penalties imposed.</p>
<p>This article doesn’t provide many facts, but five months is a long time for a complaint to be filed with the real police. The police will investigate, but there’s not likely to be the kind of evidence that they are going to want. In a criminal court, you need evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, and that can be hard to get in this kind of case. I think this is one reason these kinds of cases get handled at the college level–the standards of proof are less (sometimes too much less, in my opinion), and the punishments are less, as well. This particular guy is looking at a temporary suspension from school–severe, but a lot less than jail time. But it can be really hard to marshal enough proof to actually get jail time in a case like this.</p>
<p>So the complainant in a case like this has a difficult choice: go to the police, with a significant risk that the case won’t be pursued due to relatively weak proof, resulting in no punishment at all, or go to the school, with a higher likelihood of milder punishment. Of course, you can also do both.</p>
<p>Poor choice of words, Circuitrider. Perhaps you meant to say that prosecuting cases where all agree that the “relations” occurred but consent is disputed are tough cases (i.e. finding the true story).</p>
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<p>“Non-consensual sex” is rape. It is not exactly a current fad to define rape as a felony that can be punishable by time in prison.</p>
<p>Of course, third parties (police, courts, university administrations) trying to figure out if sex was consensual or not at the time of the act (as opposed to someone deciding later that s/he would rather not have done it) can be murky in a “s/he said, s/he said” type of problem, especially months after the act.</p>
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Legally, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Here, for example, is the New York law: <a href=“Offices, Services & Centers | Sarah Lawrence College”>http://www.slc.edu/offices-services/security/assault/Penal_Law.html</a> (I’m assuming that this is current.)Non-consensual sex is probably rape, although it can be a different crime under some circumstances. If it’s based on the incapacity of the victim, it may not be a crime at all if the defendant didn’t know of the circumstances of the incapacity. Colleges may have an entirely different set of definitions.</p>
<p>The actual Complaint which can be linked from the article has a bit more information:
<a href=“John Doe Vs Columbia University | PDF | Title Ix | Sexual Harassment”>John Doe Vs Columbia University | PDF | Title Ix | Sexual Harassment;
<p>In reading the Complaint we learn that the sexual encounter took place in her dormitory bathroom, and that she provided a condom which she retrieved from her dorm room before returning to the bathroom where he was waiting for her. </p>
<p>A recent article in Time magazine … <a href=“Rape Crisis on Missoula Campus | Time”>http://time.com/100542/the-sexual-assault-crisis-on-american-campuses/</a> </p>
<p>@LakeWashington
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<p>Not really. Because it illustrates something very interesting: If you use the word, “rape” people have one set of visceral reactions; of course a rapist should serve time in jail. But, call the same act, “non-consensual sex”, and suddenly an entirely different trope is triggered, and people start posting about plea bargaining and “alternative penalties”. I got the response I expected.</p>
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<p>After reading that, this seems to be a case where this does not appear at all to be rape. Sounds like a witch hunt based on “people know colleges have a rape problem so we will make sure to leave no case unpunished regardless of guilt for PR reasons”.</p>
<p>Honestly, I am fully supportive of extensive punishment for rape and the authorities should be immediately involved. But the problem is this case, where no due process is given. I guess I would echo others in this thread that the cases should be handed over directly to the police. The colleges should encourage this and make a quick report accessible for such things as DNA samples and possible eyewitnesses. </p>
<p>Rape is a very serious crime but it should get the proper attention from the law, otherwise strict punishment is unjust. If you want to introduce strict punishment (which I would fully advocate), you must first introduce reliable methods of conviction. If there is a merited suspicion but not enough legal evidence, then the colleges are fully entitled to their own due processes AFTER the police verdict.</p>