Stanford back on national news (in a bad way)

Parents Forum
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Stanford says in its response that its counselor asked Ms. A how she could exercise self-care, she said, “I’d like to take a day off and go to the beach,” and the counselor encouraged her to do whatever made her feel better.

That version is a lot more plausible to me than the plaintiff’s theory that a Stanford counselor proposed beach visits as a cure for rape trauma.

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Another prediction: Stanford’s request for dismissal of the complaint will not be granted. Lawyers on this forum may have a different prediction–I’d be interested.

I think there are at least two underlying problems here:

  1. The unwillingness of at least one woman who was (probably, in my opinion) assaulted to name the assailant. At least one woman reversed this decision after a lengthy period. Although this unwillingness is apparently not uncommon, if this happened at my university, I would want to understand why a woman was not willing to name the man initially.
  2. The willingness of the women to accept informal mediation, rather than going through the campus disciplinary process, when subsequently they were unhappy with that decision. This happened with several of the women. If this happened at my university, I would want to be sure that the counselors were not influencing the women to go this route, rather than to bring formal charges. There is an explanation (flimsy, in my opinion) in one of the cases, but not in others.

There is an additional issue, that Stanford repeatedly denies claims that the assaults had alleged negative effects on the women (including their withdrawal from the university). If this happened at my university, that women withdrew from their degree programs subsequent to reporting an assault, I would be concerned about it, particularly if women who reported being assaulted withdrew at a rate that substantially exceeded the overall withdrawal rate (which does appear to be the case, on the face of it). If so, then personally, I would think that the most likely reason for withdrawal was something connected with the assault.

Stanford denies the allegation and denounces the alligator. Okay, they don’t do the latter, but Stanford explicitly denies quite a few things after stating that the university has no basis to form a belief on them. I presume this is standard legal practice.

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“Stanford’s request for dismissal of the complaint will not be granted.”

I agree with you, but that has very little to do with the underlying claims. In federal court, dismissal is mainly about technical problems with the complaint. The plaintiff doesn’t have to show any evidence to defeat a motion to dismiss.

“Stanford repeatedly denies claims that the assaults had alleged negative effects on the women”

They have to. You are correct that this is standard. If the defendant doesn’t deny the allegations in the complaint, then the plaintiff is relieved of the obligation to prove those facts. The court has to accept them as true. So this is just how complaints and answers go – if you don’t know 100% that you will never want to dispute a fact in a complaint, you must deny it.

Assuming competent lawyers, documentable facts (like “plaintiff filed a complaint with OCR on date X”) in a complaint or response are highly likely to be true. It usually isn’t a sensible strategy to give your opponent an opportunity to prove you wrong.

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I still think it is a big gamble for the plaintifs and their lawyers.

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It is. That’s usually true when individuals sue an entity like Stanford. Airtight cases would settle without suit. Sometimes the suit is just a play to get a settlement. Only about 1% of civil cases filed in federal court go to trial.

I’ll be fascinated and surprised if this even gets to the summary judgment stage, where we would get to see all the depositions and other evidence.