I’ve heard colleges, especially private colleges like Stanford reserve the right to revoke the granting of degrees even after graduation if they later found the student concerned cheated academically or violated the student conduct code to such severe extremes that revocation of degree(s) granted is merited.
Heard from several Harvard alums that Harvard did this for several alums even 10+ years after graduation after finding new information about misconduct or cheating occurring during the revoked alum’s undergrad years.
Could Stanford do this as an option if they find sufficiently damning evidence that a lawsuit to have the degrees reinstated would be laughed out of court?
The women’s lawsuit is against the college…why would their decision about the accused have anything part of the outcome of the women’s lawsuit? If, in fact, he was banned from campus for 10 or15 years depending on what you read and if he was on campus that might be a legitimate issue between the college and the accused and even then it’s tenuous legally unless his “banning” wasn’t part of a criminal complaint but the fact they gave him his diploma doesn’t feel to me like it’s in play in anyway in the lawsuit. If these women want this guy locked up and out of society they are suing the wrong entity and pursing the wrong channel. In my opinion this is the “weakness” of the failing Dear College interpretations…the universities can punish in any way they seem fit.
This is from a recent news article:
Finally, in my opinion, one of the arguments is that the complainants did not know about each others complaints due to privacy rights …which they would have if they each had used the criminal justice system.
Universities can revoke degrees, but usually the reasoning is that there was some kind of fraud on the university: fake admissions documents or academic misconduct so serious that the student didn’t really earn the awarded degree. I haven’t heard of a revocation due to violent behavior discovered after the fact, but I guess it’s possible.
“Finally, in my opinion, one of the arguments is that the complainants did not know about each others complaints due to privacy rights …which they would have if they each had used the criminal justice system.”
If Stanford does not have centralized records of sexual assault complaints, that is the college’s fault, not the victims’.
usahopefuly, you are missing the point. the college certainly knows who accuses who of what…the point is that the women would not know about any other accusations with a police record, the police would know if several different people accused one person of a similar offense. What makes you think blame lies with the accusers for being unable to access private university records? I don’t think the college has fault…they have records.
Optimistic about what? That the 4 claimants won’t win big bucks from the university? That the four claimants either did not use the criminal justices system or tried and didn’t have a case and are looking for alternative retribution? That you are less optimistic that they will strip this guy of his degree? I’m not understanding what it is that people think these women want years later unless they are heavily involved in the advocacy system and want the media attention their filing created. I wish them luck…but it’s not clear to me what they want.
@momofthreeboys people don’t use the criminal justice system. The district attorney tries cases no one else. The DA makes the call whether to prosecute or not. It is clear what the women want. They want money. This is a bread and butter case of negligence. If Stanford was negligent they will pay money. That consists of medical bills, lost wages , and other hard damages. It also consists of damages for emotional distress. It is up to a jury to decide how much Stanford will or will not pay based on the evidence and the jury instructions. California is also a comparative fault state which means Stanford will only pay their percentage fault of the emotional distress damages
I’ve always thought it was about money. I’m not sure why you don’t think people use the criminal justice system. People that aren’t in a university setting absolutely use the criminal justice system. The question is, did the university cause their emotional distress or did the situation that they reported to the university cause their distress and that’s isn’t even the root of the lawsuit. I will give them this, they are brave to want a jury trial…if it’s more money they want, might be easier to negotiate a settlement.
I am not sure what you are talking about. The people of the state of California are the prosecuting authority not an individual. If the university caused the emotional distress then that is the root of the lawsuit. To establish a claim for negligence you need to show duty, breach of duty, proximate cause and damages. If you can prove that with a preponderance of the evidence you usually get money.
I am not a lawyer. But I will offer my (uninformed) prediction about this: Stanford will offer the women a settlement, with the requirement that the terms of the settlement be kept confidential. The women’s lawyers will advise them to accept the settlement. Then the women may accept the settlement, or they may not. If the women do not accept the settlement, it might be simply because they want more money than Stanford is offering, and they think they can get it (probably against advice of counsel). But it might also be that they are so angry at Stanford for not taking action to stop the alleged assailant, and for treating their assaults as something that allows for quick recovery (at the beach!), that they will go to trial, even if they believe they will wind up with less money than Stanford is offering up front. I think recent posters are not factoring anger into the women’s decision-making process.
Stanford benefits from delaying the case, until people have forgotten about Brock Turner and his claim that he was influenced by the general culture of the swim team.
I don’t think this problem is confined to Stanford by any means. It’s difficult to get a handle on the specifics, on a case-by-case basis, at other colleges.
Well, no. collegedad13 is right, it’s ultimately the prosecutor’s decision whether to prosecute, not the victim’s, and prosecutors only want to prosecute winnable cases, i.e., cases where they think they can persuade the jury of defendant’s guilt “beyond reasonable doubt,” which is a pretty high bar. That means the benefit of the doubt always goes to the accused. This is what’s meant by “innocent until proven guilty”—it doesn’t mean the accused is actually innocent, it just means that the criminal justice system must treat the accused as if he is innocent unless a jury is persuaded of his guilt, usually unanimously, “beyond reasonable doubt”, which means an enormous number of actual rapists walk, sometimes because the prosecutor fails to persuade the jury at trial, but more often because the case is never even prosecuted.
It’s hard to meet that evidentiary standard in rape cases, absent a confession or a third-party eyewitness account. That’s one reason (along with many others, including victim-blaming by police and prosecutors) that only about 2% of rape cases reported to the police result in a felony conviction. Does that mean the other 98% are just phony charges, i.e., that the accused are innocent? Of course not; some may be, but most are probably legitimate charges where the police just felt they didn’t have enough evidence to refer the case to the prosecutor, or the prosecutor felt he didn’t have enough evidence to persuade a jury “beyond reasonable doubt,” even if the police and prosecutor believe the rape actually occurred.
Women know this, and it’s probably one major reason (along with many others, including victim-blaming by police and prosecutors) that most rapes aren’t reported to the police. And that’s not just on college campuses, Surveys show that 2/3 of women who self-identify as rape victims say they didn’t report the rape to the police. Among college students, only 20% report rapes to the police, while among college-age non-students, 32% report to the police—a higher percentage to be sure, but still an overwhelming majority opting out of the criminal justice system, in no small measure because women think reporting a rape to the police will likely prove futile—as well as time-consuming and potentially psychologically damaging due to victim-blaming and being compelled to repeatedly dredge up the sordid details of a truly horrendous experience.
In my opinion this is splitting hairs…unless a police office happens to see a crime in process a victim usually has to report it to the police…which starts the cycle. You guys are arguing semantics. “Opting” out of anything is always an option even if you are a college student opting not to avail yourself of the college services or opting out by not reporting it to the police like the option available to a local not attending a college in that jurisdiction.
I’d love to read the complaint, but I don’t think the media has bothered to publish. Maybe I’d change my thoughts about what Stanford did or didn’t do and maybe not.
Quoted from the article “Organization Conduct Board (OCB) investigation found that the Band had violated University policies on alcohol, controlled substances, sexual harassment and hazing.”
I think that is inaccurate. If you read the statement by Stanford they said they were approached by the lawyers with a settlement offer to not file suit . That seems highly plausible especially if conclude that this is about “money.” Here is there response where the settlement offer was discussed. I think it was not to specifically drop the Title IX complaints but to “drop” this lawsuit being discussed and any future lawsuits. These ladies, and I notice one has now identified herself in the thread posted in #57need to be careful with the media if they want to win this suit.