CHE article: Rape Procedures

[Wahoo Redux]

I predict the conversation will derail fairly quickly, so I will leave, but I post this anyway.

'How Much Damage Have My Colleagues and I Done?' A former dean of students loses faith in how colleges handle sexual assault.

Good luck.

[Ruralguy]

I don't think we shouldn't investigate serious allegations (regarding any member of campus and any form of misconduct) just because it *might* cause problems for the accused if it proves to be false. I do think though that this puts a burden on the institution to conduct such investigations and related hearings in a fair manner that protects everyone. Having worked on a number of student and faculty misconduct cases (some sexual in nature, some not), I'd say that I haven't seen anything yet that either seemed to be made up or that was proven to be fabricated or seriously exaggerated . However, everything, and I mean everything, had multiple perspectives.
Witnesses saw things differently from victims and victims saw things differently than perpetrators. In some cases, there wasn't much of a difference between all of them.

[Katrina Gulliver]

Rape is a serious crime. It should be investigated by the police. If someone got stabbed on campus, there would be no question that a campus committee should adjudicate it.

[marshwiggle]

She gets points for honesty, but she was obviously incredibly naive:

"My son's hearing was a joke," she said. "He never stood a chance. Do you know that the hearing officer and the investigator are good friends? And that the 'advocate'" — she practically spit out the word — "they assigned to him was also a friend of theirs? I found them all on Facebook, attending the wedding of the person who is supposed to hear appeals. All friends. I saw them leaving together after the hearing, and in the parking lot of a restaurant heading in together. We decided to eat somewhere else."

I thought about my colleagues, the small college team I worked with every day. We were friends. We sometimes dined together. We would have walked across campus together after a hearing. It had honestly never occurred to me how that would look to an outsider desperately seeking a fair hearing for her son. In her eyes, the fix was in, had always been. She told me what school her son had been expelled from. I knew some of those people. I knew my counterpart there, knew him to be a highly-regarded senior student affairs professional. I offered no defense, however, because I had none.

The ridiculously fallacy of "good people never do bad things."

As others have said, accusations of criminal behaviour should be investigated and dealt with by the police. The legal system has developed over centuries; the idea that a bunch of campus bureaucrats should be able to come up with something as good or *better over the course of a couple of "leadership retreats" or whatever is ludicrous.


*Unless "better" ignores the goals of the legal system, and adopts something else like "believe all women".
And in case it needs to be said, "believe all men" would be equally assinine.

[Ruralguy]

On some campuses, many violent crimes are handled internally as well, or least concurrent with criminal investigations. The reason is clear: it might take over a year for someone to be found guilty or not guilty of some crime. In the meantime, someone has to decide whether that student can remain enrolled. It's similar for sexual misconduct except that of course for the last few years, there has been a dictated (by feds) process for doing so.

[Ruralguy]

I'd like to briefly add that there are bad and good ways of handling misconduct cases.

Bad: only one person, and administrator, handles all cases from beginning to end. Hearings are just meetings in an office with that one person.

good: all cases involve multiple individuals , often some elected for this purpose and then trained if necessary.
All cases (beyond those that are frivolous) get hearings. Hearings involve multiple people. Faculty cases use have faculty on panel, student cases have at least one student, etc.

[marshwiggle]

I'd like to briefly add that there are bad and good ways of handling misconduct cases.

Bad: only one person, and administrator, handles all cases from beginning to end. Hearings are just meetings in an office with that one person.

good: all cases involve multiple individuals , often some elected for this purpose and then trained if necessary.
All cases (beyond those that are frivolous) get hearings. Hearings involve multiple people. Faculty cases use have faculty on panel, student cases have at least one student, etc.

I've heard of cases of people being called into hearings where they weren't even told the specifics of the complaint against them. By any sane definition of due process, that isn't.

[Ruralguy]

Well, as I said, there are good and bad versions of this for any form of misconduct involving any campus constituency.
The cure is to adopt a sensible process.

[marshwiggle]

Well, as I said, there are good and bad versions of this for any form of misconduct involving any campus constituency.
The cure is to adopt a sensible process.

I think one of the most sensible principles would be for "misconduct" to be limited to a formal campus code of conduct, which outlines all of the offences, disciplinary process, etc. In other words, it's separate from the legal system because it is not duplicating the legal system; it's dealing with its own non-legal conduct requirements. If it leads to expulsions of students for what is seen as ridiculous reasons, or if it is seen to be too lenient on certain offenses, it will be up to the institution to revise it as needed. But since it's not duplicating the legal system, it should be less prone to legal challenges of its rulings.

[Ruralguy]

I don't think there is any practical way to avoid disciplining students regarding a variety of offenses that might be pursued by the legal system.  This might be in the form of temporary suspension if accused of a violent offense, but could cover some other offenses.  Keep in mind that title IX is only a fraction of these sorts of offenses.

[marshwiggle]

I don't think there is any practical way to avoid disciplining students regarding a variety of offenses that might be pursued by the legal system.  This might be in the form of temporary suspension if accused of a violent offense, but could cover some other offenses.  Keep in mind that title IX is only a fraction of these sorts of offenses.

But if there is something requiring a legal investigation, then the student's academic status should be maintained pending the outcome of the legal investigation. In other words, if the student is ultimately cleared legally, they should NOT be expelled or suffer academic penalties because of the original suspicion.

[Ruralguy]

I think most schools would object to waiting months or years to make even a temporary decision (suspension) if, for instance, a student got involved in a violent act that had witnesses. This need not be rape, it could be a bar brawl or serious vandalism. But a school that feels that it has enough evidence to say "we don't want him/her here while there's a legal investigation going on" will probably continue to put their foot down on such issues, Title IX related or not. In fact, they are likely to ask that the authorities not get involved so that they may proceed in whatever manner they'd like (its less and less often that they get can away with that, especially if there's a victim, not the college itself, willing to press charges). 

[mamselle]

Rape is a serious crime. It should be investigated by the police. If someone got stabbed on campus, there would be no question that a campus committee should adjudicate it.

+1

Lodge it with the people who do serious crime, not campus infractions.

If a crime was committed, a campus process may also be involved, up to and including suspension of expulsion.

But at the same time, don't play around with it as if it were a waiting game. Some kind of parallel process may be necessary, especially if there's a danger of repeated activities.

M.

[Ruralguy]

Its most often up to the complainant (victim) to report to the police. They often do, but even if they do, it can take years even for the DA to decide to prosecute let alone come to a decision as to guilt.

I suppose you could say that anything less than a crime to report to the police shouldn't even be considered, and then everything else should go to the police, but colleges already don't operate like that.

Its most typical to deal with disciplinary procedures on students in parallel with any kind of government related investigation , and this has been the way for decades, independent of anything related to TIX.  In the end, the DA might say that the school's disciplinary procedures were sufficient , but note that this didn't keep the school from making some sort of decision, and the school's work on the issue didn't keep the DA from looking into the matter.


What I can't really relate to  is the idea that we should engage in  no disciplinary proceedings at all  *if* police are involved in any way.  It seems as if the two procedures can proceed in parallel.

[Wahoo Redux]

The question, folks, revolves around fairness to the accused.