Nothing very different about these cases from what we have seen elsewhere although I thought this fact was different:
“University police never spoke to the woman the undergrad was accused of assaulting and no criminal charges were ever pursued, his lawsuit says. The father’s report was referred to the UT dean of students.”
The father of a non-student (and not a minor apparently since it was not reported to police) made the allegation and the student is facing expulsion. The woman did not report or even speak to the university!
We have also had a conversation about duties to report to police or policies advising against faculty and staff notifying police. Here is what UT says:
“UT is not obligated to tell police of alleged sexual assaults, except in “extreme cases” such as an assault involving a minor, said Paul Liebman, UT’s chief compliance officer. That policy is “consistent with the premise that someone who’s come forward as a victim should be able to control their own destiny,” he said.”
I am no lawyer, but it seems to me that a person with information of a felony crime is obligated to report this information to the police. Now the victim has every right to withhold her/his cooperation and thus “control their own destiny”. Statistics indicate that a very high percentage of campus sexual assaults are committed by serial perpetrators and professional law officials are best able to get these criminals behind bars where they belong.
@bigred76, you are very out of date on campus sexual assault policies. Colleges do not report sexual assaults to the police, they are not investigated by law enforcement, and the hearings and punishments are handled entirely by the universities with no due process afforded to the accused. I suggest you google “campus sexual assault due process” or the “Dear Colleague letter” from 2011.
The consequences of sexual assault for a UT student can be one or more of the following:
A. Criminal prosecution
B. Civil
C. University Discipline
University Discipline has the lowest threshold of proof and arguably the least consequences. Some argue that allegations sexual assaults should always be referred to the criminal justice system. However, the university retains its right to discipline students who violate university policy or student code of conduct. The difference in standards of proof explains why someone can be punished by the university for the same alleged conduct where the prosecutor declined to file charges.
I find it very odd the the University would punish someone not based on the victim’s complaint but based on her father’s- someone who was not a witness to the events in question. It will be interesting to see how these cases turn out.
Not “odd”, unjust and It is happening all over the country. If there is an accusation, most universities will endorse some type of punishment (usually expulsion or suspension) just to keep from losing funding due to Title IX. It is making the news because there have been so many falsely accused that have been punished.
There have been a lot of looong threads on CC about this, with a lot of heartfelt and anguished, but generally civil and intelligent discussion. I don’t mean to turn this thread into another one. But I want to note that just about every statement in the two sentences above has something significantly wrong, no matter where you stand in the spectrum of debate about this issue:
– There is no evidence that “most universities” will endorse some type of punishment whenever there is an accusation. As far as I can tell, lots of cases wind up with no discipline, except perhaps ordering the accused to stay away from the accuser.
– Notwithstanding that many university policies permit expulsion or suspension on grounds and with a low evidentiary standard that I believe is inadequate, there is no evidence that expulsion or suspension is the usual punishment applied, if any is applied. I think there is a lot of probation and sensitivity training out there. Expulsions produce court cases and headlines; modest penalties or no penalties generally don’t.
– While it is true that the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights makes an implied threat to challenge universities’ funding under Title IX if they do not comply with the suggested standards for sexual assault disciplinary procedures, and although it has opened dozens, maybe hundreds of cases, as far as I know it has never made a serious attempt to withdraw federal funding on this basis, and I would be shocked to find anyone who expects it to do that. The practical fear universities’ counsel may have is harassment by OCR, not actual loss of funding.
– It depends a lot what you mean by “falsely accused.” There have been a few cases, maybe, where someone who has been accused and punished seems to have a decent argument that the accusation is patently false. There are more cases – probably not so “many” given the number of college students out there, and their propensity to have sex with each other under sketchy conditions, but certainly enough to make news – where there is little or no dispute about what happened, but fierce disagreement about whether what happened was worthy of discipline. That’s not a false accusation; that’s a policy question.
Yes, the father is the person who called UT police initially. He was referred to the Dean of Students.
The missing piece here is that the office of the Dean of Students would then have been responsible for investigating the allegation, not the university police. Their investigator would have spoken to the alleged victim, witnesses, and the accused, before presenting the evidence.
There is too much missing information to draw conclusions here, but if I had to guess, I’d say that the 24-yr-old has an accuser who actually went to the police, which takes a lot, which makes things look worse for him. As we have seen many times, the decision of the police not to charge and the prosecution not to proceed doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. (Although we have to remember that the Duke lacrosse accuser also went to the police. There are always exceptions.)
The undergraduate seems to have been in a more questionable situation. She was obviously drunk enough to not remember much, but that doesn’t mean he could or should have known it. Her friend said that she seemed to be functional and able to consent. It’s one of those gray areas. Again, not enough details.
My thoughts on these cases are colored, I admit, from recently reading Missoula.