While certain posters here on this forum have evolved over the years, that was the initial position held by many way back when. And many people in the public at large believe that sexual assault should only be handled by law enforcement. Read the comment section to just about any article on campus sexual assault.
From what I heard from somebody who taught in various colleges for many years, academic misconduct, which also has potentially very serious consequences for a student, is investigated in a significantly more responsible and evenhanded way than sexual assault or discrimination cases. The offices which investigate the latter have little oversight, are heavily biased and don’t follow procedural rules that are followed in criminal or civil court cases (for example, you can be interrogated as a witness but never see the record of what you said).
An administrative hearing never follows the rules that are followed in criminal or civl court. They are separate and distinct systems with different penalties and different goals.
On what basis do you contend that the offices which investigate are heavily biased and have little oversight? Are you claiming they are biased against men? There are many Title IX coordinators that are male. Are you aware that many schools have investigations handled by outside law firms or even retired judges? Are they biased too?
Whether you’re talking about drug offenses, physical assault, or vandalism in cases where expulsion is a possibility, we should want the students to have the right to legal representation during the hearing, colleges to follow the rules of evidence for criminal trials, and a licensed member of the bar to make evidentiary rulings. If we’re stuck having colleges adjudicate criminal matters, we should want colleges to operate a lot more like the criminal justice system.
http://www.thedp.com/article/2017/09/devos-wants-to-change-how-sexual-violence-is-investigated-on-campus-what-does-that-mean-for-penn My DD is a senior at Penn (currently abroad.) The administration is basically saying nothing will change in their policy, regardless of what Betsy DeVos and Co. think.
Think about what you just posted @roethlisburger – you want campus adjudication to be more like a system that by it’s very nature is unable to prosecute the vast majority of campus sexual assault cases. Is that the result you would like to achieve?
And think further about what it would mean to low income students involved in disciplinary proceedings – those students who could not afford an attorney or could not afford a high powered one that the other party may have the resources to retain. Talk about creating an uneven playing field. Believe me when I tell you that attorneys are expensive and high powered ones are prohibitive for most average income families. Students generally have no income, how are they going to pay for these attorneys?
Attempting to mimic the criminal justice system which has huge problems of it’s own is not the answer. The goals of the college adjudication system are very, very different.
If the vast majority of campus sexual assault cases are based on weak evidence(see ucbalumnus #31), then failure to convict the accused in those situations is a feature, not a bug. I’m not sure what your point is about low income students and attorneys. In a criminal case only the defendant has to hire their own attorney. The prosecutor represents the victim.
My point is that you stated students should have legal representation in college proceedings. All participants in college proceedings are students who generally have little or no income. Some might have families who can afford the Andrew Miltenbergs of the world who are experts in the field – others might not be able to afford an attorney at all. That creates an uneven playing field. Colleges don’t have prosecutors representing the state nor should they – their interests are very different.
College panels don’t look like criminal proceedings because they are not based on criminal law. Our criminal system is a penal one where prosecutors have discretion and the state’s interests are represented not those of the alleged victim. The Title IX panels seek equality in educational opportunity and the alleged victim is a full party to the proceeding whose interests in an education are on full footing with those of the accused.
If we truly went to criminal justice like proceedings, colleges would have their in-house attorneys who could act as prosecutors. If you want to stick to civil litigation style proceedings and are worried about an unequal playing field, colleges could reimburse all parties for their legal expenses with the counsel of their choice. Your point about income goes both ways. A destitute male student may be at an unfair disadvantage, when the female accuser can afford top counsel. Even an unequal situation would be a vast improvement to the absurdity of an accused rapist, representing himself pro se, in what is effectively a felony trial, or expecting a rape victim to step into the role of a quasi-prosecutor, or worse kangaroo courts where the tribunal invents new rules of evidence as they go along.
@roethlisburger Title IX is a civl rights law not a criminal law. The college should not be representing either party – it’s a hearing where panel members attempt to arrive at the truth and both parties come in on equal footing. Why should colleges absorb the cost of attorneys fees? That would be exorbitant. So they pay to defend someone who has allegedly violated their code of conduct?
if you are good going to kick someone out of college and label them a rapist or a sexual assaulter for the rest of their life GR via the internet then colleges sure as heck better be darn sure thry have evidence and you sure as heck better make sure you aren’t trouncing on either civil rights or contract law. If colleges are going to pretend to replace our criminal systems and if accusers and colleges are going to throw out legal terms like sexual assault or rape in the media yeah they need to meet our legal minimums at most. I think it is a total cop out to hide behind claiming that labeling someone as a sexual assaulter is a “code of conduct” issue. That is absurd.
Perhaps if there is poor quality evidence, poor quality witnesses and poor quality memories there should not be a prosecution. I don’t understand why anyone would advocate for a system that allows someone to be convicted based on poor quality evidence, poor quality witnesses and poor quality memories. What exactly is the justification for such a system?
I agree with this statement but is it really the truth? If universities come at this issue with an attitude that all accusers should be believed are both parties really on equal footing?
I appreciate HarvestMoon1’s posts on this thread. I have written previously that I support a return to the “clear and convincing” standard of proof, in cases where a student may be suspended or expelled.
The claims that Betsy DeVos’s likely changes from the “Dear Colleague” letter will increase “justice,” however, do not seem warranted to me. These changes will very likely reduce injustices against those who are unfairly accused. That is good.
They don’t begin to help to bring justice for a person who is assaulted in private, where there is no evidence, just the statement of the victim. There is even less likely to be any justice for a woman who is assaulted by someone she knows.
I don’t really know of any solution for this, other than to attempt to strengthen people’s consciences, and hope that the perpetrator finally admits it. Perhaps creating a general culture that regards raping someone as shameful rather than manly would help. This clearly needs to start pre-college.
The New York Times ran an op-ed piece a while ago lauding the likely changes, and noting that something like 87% of colleges had no reported rapes on campus in the previous year. Anyone want to hazard a guess about the per cent of colleges that actually had no rapes? Ironically, the evening of the very same day, the campus police at my university sent out a text warning about an attempted assault by multiple assailants.
Rapes are not common so not having a rape on a campus does not surprise me. Assaults or attempted rapes would be a higher number and I would imagine the numbers would be consistent if not lower than what happens with that age group not in college. I imagine during the question answer session some of these definitions will be established as it varies state by state.
If young women want to redefine nonsatisfactory sexual experiences as assault they have a tough hill to climb. I honestly think that is the biggest hurdle young women face because most older people probably don’t define negative experiences as assault in the absence of real assault. Assault is not something that requires weeks, months or years to surface.
Any lawyers want to chime in about whether Penn administrators are opening themselves up to lawsuits (at a personal individual level, not the university level) if recommending policies that conflict with federal guidelines?
I think the statements in the first paragraph of #54 are incorrect, though I would agree that the statistics are somewhat murky. Many young women in that age group who are not in college live at home, and I suspect at least some of them are safer than college women in a typical college environment.
In my experience as a college faculty member, I have heard from a number of young women who were unquestionably raped, and were by no means attempting to “redefine nonsatisfactory sexual experiences as assault.” The comments in the second paragraph of #54 seem to me to trivialize a serious and deeply troubling issue.
Also, it is not at all uncommon for the victim’s recognition of rape to “surface” immediately, yet for it it take weeks or months for the victim to report the situation to others. I do not exactly know why this is. However, the attitudes expressed in paragraph #2 of post #54 probably contribute to victims’ difficulty in reporting an actual assault.
A professional process is expensive. How you split the costs between the colleges, the students, and the government is a sidebar. If you want sexual assault cases done on the cheap, you should expect to get amateurish results. In your Elliott example that you thought was relevant, all parties were represented by teams of high powered attorneys.
“Any lawyers want to chime in about whether Penn administrators are opening themselves up to lawsuits (at a personal individual level, not the university level) if recommending policies that conflict with federal guidelines?”
Everybody’s open to lawsuits from all angles in this climate. A lot depends on whether the end result of the DeVos process is a loosening of regulation in general (she’s all about local control!) or the imposition of new standards that are different but equally strict. In the latter case, for example, if federal regs start to mandate using the “clear and convincing” standard, I would expect schools to toe the line. If the new regs just withdraw the DCL and say “Be fair to everybody,” then the status quo established during the DCL period is likely to continue. The present Title IX infrastructure includes thousands upon thousands of employees, dedicated physical space on campus, spots in the administrative hierarchy, allied student organizations, time and money invested in training faculty and staff to follow the current model…bureaucracies like that do not go away quickly, if at all.
The problem with this entire debate is the simple reality of law enforcement response to, and resouces for, rape/assault investigations. This is an area that often local law enforcement does not handle well, due to staffing, difficulty of investigation and resource issues.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/07/16/untested-rape-kits-evidence-across-usa/29902199/
are just two articles of many that come up with a quick search. Attempting to secure due process for accused is obviously important, but needs to be balanced with effective enforcement for the victim.
Not sure how rolling back/ending one process without another to replace it does that. It is impossible to argue the current judicial process works well for victims in many jurisidictions. Would have been more encouraging that this was not just an assualt on Obama-era guidelines for political reasons if there had been something effective or at least thoughtful that had replaced the former letter.