<p>OCR’s investigations are aimed at colleges and universities not the individuals involved. Do recipients have fair and equitable systems in place and do they implement them fairly so that there is no discrimination on the basis of race, sex, national origin, color, disability, and age, which are OCR’s jurisdictional bases. If there is a problem OCR tells the colleges to fix it and they sign an agreement, which OCR monitors for x number of years. If a post secondary educational institution denies OCR access (which is a very, very bad and stupid thing to do) or refuses to resolve the problems that OCR identifies as a result of an investigation, OCR has two options. One, refer the matter to Justice for injunctive relief. In the years I spent in OCR, there was a strong dislike for Justice (I also worked there when I was a Fed) and a disinclination to refer anything to them except garbage. Option two is to move for an administrative hearing designed to terminated financial assistance from the Department of Education, and possibly other Federal agencies. This option is so draconian (blame it on Congress in 1964), that most institutions cooperate with OCR. OCR and the institution also have the option of resolving the matter prior to the investigation. This option was ended by the Bush fils administration because they wrongly believed that OCR was brow beating recipients into surrendering their rights and settling. I believe that the current administration has re-instituted this option.</p>
<p>Rape is horrible, and seeing a rapist get away with it is absolutely horrendous, but to me, being falsely accused of doing something so incredibly horrible is the worst possible scenario.</p>
<p>I am not sure I understand, blank mind.
Are you saying that being raped, is not the worst situation, but being falsely accused of rape is?</p>
<p>(responding to tsdad’s last post) But the letter we are talking about is about sexual violence, not sexual discrimination or harassment in general. It’s telling the colleges what procedures for processing grievances related to episodes of sexual violence should be–and it’s telling them to use the preponderance of the evidence standard for such cases. This is troubling to me, because it’s clear, when you read the letter, that we are really in the realm of at least quasi-criminal proceedings here.</p>
<p>Here are two real, albeit old, cases. I’ll give the facts in two different posts.</p>
<p>At a top college, there is a club of beautiful and wealthy students who engage in racy behavior. A freshman woman accepts an invitation to a party. The invitation makes it clear that the participants will be nude. Dinner is served at the party, along with wine. The young woman starts to feel “weird.” She approaches a male senior, whom she recognizes as an RA from her dorm. She tells him she feels odd, and she thinks someone spiked her drink. She wants to leave, but is worried that she’ll get worse on the way back to the dorm. He agrees to take her back to the dorm. They get dressed and leave. He walks her back. She says she’s feeling better. When they get to her room, they have sex. </p>
<p>She recovers enough to recall the sex. She goes to the university hospital for emergency contraception. Hearing her story, the doctor orders a rape kit and blood and urine tests. She’s been drugged with a roofie. </p>
<p>She files charges against the senior. He says the sex was consensual. He denies any knowledge that she had been drugged with a roofie. The private club members lawyer up. Nobody is talking.</p>
<p>But one cracks. It seems that when another freshman woman started acting weird, a senior female club member took her to the university hospital. Senior told med staff she thought the younger woman had been drugged. Tests proved she’d been given a roofie. University hospital can release some of the info because of a technicality–the person who said she thought the young woman had been drugged wasn’t a patient. So cops interview the senior woman. She admits that they were at the same party and the reason she thought the woman she’d taken to the hospital might have been drugged was that she’d overheard the other woman tell the male senior she thought her drink had been spiked. So, when another young woman began acting oddly, she took it upon herself to get her medical treatment.</p>
<p>The young man could not be charged with the crime of rape. There was no proof that he had anything to do with giving her a roofie. There was no proof that he actually knew that she had been given a roofie. So, there was no proof that he knew she was impaired when she consented to the sex.</p>
<p>Think the university should apply the same standard, Hunt? He’s not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.</p>
<p>Well emeraldkity, it’s kind of a Sophie’s Choice, but yes, I do think being falsely accused is worse. </p>
<p>I have nothing but empathy and concern for a rape victim and nothing but disgust and hatred for a rapist. Being falsely accused would bring all the disgust & hatred upon someone who did nothing to earn it. Both scenarios are life changing and neither person will ever be the same. But a victim will have support and privacy while the falsely accused will have neither, and will have to live with the stigma forever. That is fitting punishment for a rapist, but not for an innocent person.</p>
<p>I wish all would feel such empathy to the thousands of falsely accused, and falsely imprisoned, now occupying our nation’s prisons.</p>
<p>I think OCR took a rational approach to a difficult problem, and left enough room for college administrators to figure out how best to apply it in their individual situations. The disconnect between the number of rapes and sexual assaults on campus, and the number of charges actually brought is my mind, harrowing to say the least. And, yes, no matter how one applies the letter (not the law, but the letter), there will be miscarriages of justice. But outlier cases make for bad law, and poor public policy choices.</p>
<p>Case #2.</p>
<p>A young woman attends a frat party at a Midwestern state U. She has too much to drink. She goes to sleep under a table that has been pushed back out of the way for the party. </p>
<p>She passes out. She comes to the following morning and realizes she is being raped. She tries to fight back, but the guy is big and he’s too far along to stop him. He finishes and rolls off her. She stumbles to her feet and leaves. At the door, she looks back at her assailant. She’s stunned. He’s a star football player, so she recognizes him. They’ve never met before.</p>
<p>She goes back to her dorm. Later, he calls her. She’s left her purse behind and he offers to return it to her. She tells him to drop it off but she doesn’t want to see him because he raped her. He tells her he’s so sorry. He doesn’t know what got into him. He begs her not to report it because his mom is a rape counselor and it would kill her if she knew what he’d done. Unknown to him, the young woman has taped the conversation.</p>
<p>She goes for rape counseling provided by the university. The counselor urges her to file charges with the university. She signs a consent form. She doesn’t realize that one provision is that she won’t report the crime to the police. (I don’t think anyone would enforce such a provision now, but at the time, such waivers were enforced.) </p>
<p>There’s a hearing. There’s a law in the state prohibiting the taping of a phone conversation without the consent of both parties to the conversation. The tape is ruled inadmissible. The young man refuses to testify. He asserts his Fifth Amendment rights. </p>
<p>I take it, Hunt, that you think the young man should have the same rights he’d have in a criminal trial. Thus, he can’t be forced to testify and no adverse inference can be drawn from that refusal. The tape can’t be entered into evidence. So, he’s not guilty because the only evidence is the young woman’s uncorroborated report of what happened.</p>
<p>I would disagree that most or even many rape victims feel supported & heard.
To the contrary our culture blames the victim , unless they are Mother Teresa.</p>
<p>Have you ever been raped or known someone who has?
I * have* been raped and decades later I am still coping with the shame/blame.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>OCR’s point, with which I agree, is that sexual violence is a form of sex discrimination since it effectively denies an individual, on the basis of sex, an equal educational opportunity. Hence it is a violation of Title IX apart from being a violation of any criminal statutes.</p>
<p>And, I am absolutely flabbergasted that someone would say that being wrongly accused of rape–not convicted, just accused–is WORSE than being ACTUALLY RAPED.</p>
<p>The idea that when a young male college student is accused of raping a young female college student everyone will condemn him and he will get no “support” is laughable. If the two were both drunk at the time, the idea that everyone will condemn him and support her is even more ridiculous.</p>
<p>Emerald, so sorry. My mom clearly still felt the pain 25 years later.</p>
<p>
What you’re describing is a criminal trial. That’s my point. If he’s found “guilty” (which is a criminal, not a civil, term), he can be subject to punishment that can be quite severe in its impact–expulsion from college and a life-long stigma. I guess I don’t understand why somebody would think that the standards of proof in a criminal trial are appropriate, but think that much more lenient standards should apply in a proceeding that is essentially the same as a criminal trial. Indeed, you could argue that the standards of proof should be even stricter in a setting where you don’t have a trained judge overseeing the proceedings. </p>
<p>Now, if what you really think is that criminal trials for rape shouldn’t use guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, it’s a different mater.</p>
<p>
Sexual violence is a bad thing. But I think it’s a different thing from sex discrimination. Note that your logic would exclude homosexual sex from the coverage of these provisions. Do you think OCR would agree?</p>
<p>Well, just call me Mother Theresa then, because I do not ever blame the victim. And just because someone can post example on top of example of rapists getting away with their crime does not lessen the impact of a false accusation on the life of the innocent person. I am absolutely flabbergasted that some cannot concede even that much of a point.</p>
<p>And mini, I do indeed have empathy for the falsely accused & imprisoned. The only reason I am against the death penalty is because it is way too easy to be wrongly convicted.</p>
<p>This topic, naturally, is a difficult one to discuss. But here’s an analogy that might help.</p>
<p>What if a college did the following: It decides that it wants to crack down on marijuana use. The problem is that it is very difficult to catch students actually using marijuana. The police, of course, aren’t interested unless students can be actually caught possessing marijuana. So the college announces that it is going to expel anybody who, by a preponderance of the evidence, is more likely than not to have been smoking marijuana. So, for example, if people on the hall report that they smelled marijuana smoke coming from your room, you will (most likely) be expelled. Does the use of that standard trouble you?</p>
<p>This was skimmed over a little but I’ll reask.</p>
<p>Why do we, as a society, want colleges judging these? If someone is a rapist we want him in jail. If someone isn’t a rapist we don’t want him expelled. Why do you all think it’s appropriate for the college to be handling this at all in terms of judgment. What do you think courts exist for? If one employee of Walmart accused another of raping her would you think it appropriate for Walmart to create their version of a trail for the case?</p>
<p>blankmind,</p>
<p>I am not saying that a false accusation has no impact on the life of an innocent person. If you got that from my post, I failed to articulate what I was saying well.</p>
<p>But if I had the horrible choice of having a son falsely accused of rape or having a daughter actually raped, I’d choose the first option in a heart beat.</p>
<p>emerald, have you ever gone to a therapist and talked about this? I’m guessing you have, and the incident might have been terrifying, but have you ever given yourself “permission” to move on? Maybe, because you have girls, this issue still plays loudly.</p>
<p>There have been many things happening in my life, and getting drunk while in college and being forced to have sex with some kid I didn’t like goes in the “this stinks” pile. I didn’t know to call it rape or “date rape” back then. I did the usual “blame myself” for what happened and I never told anyone. Maybe it was an underlying reason I gave myself to transfer a year later, but this hasn’t wrecked my life.</p>
<p>
Yes, I think that’s reasonable in this case.</p>
<p>
Is someone not guilty simply because there is no other evidence? How is anyone EVER convicted of rape? In this case, it comes down to who they would believe. If there is evidence that they had sex, it seems less likely that he could claim it was consensual when she was passed out under a table and had never even met him before that time.</p>
<p>HUnt: “The report also found that approximately 6.1 percent of males were victims of completed or attempted sexual assault during college.” </p>
<p>And, “complainant” is often followed by the pronouns “his or her.” Likewise, the “alleged perpetrator” is referred to as either male or female.</p>
<p>Lima- holy crap.</p>
<p>
But it might get harder if the choice was having the son expelled from college or imprisoned based on a false accusation. I agree that these still don’t balance, but they do balance more than accusation vs. rape. In our criminal system, we all accept that a certain number of guilty persons escape punishment in order to protect the innocent. Probably a lot of guilty people for each innocent person.</p>