Universities Under Investigation Re: Handling Sexual Assault
 

The federal Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights announced today that 55 institutions of higher learning are being investigated for possible Title IX investigations related to their handling of sexual assault and rape allegations. The institutions are:

Arizona State University
Butte-Glen Community College District
Occidental College
University of California (Berkeley)
University of Southern California
Regis University
University of Colorado (Boulder)
University of Colorado (Denver)
University of Denver
University of Connecticut
Catholic University
Florida State University
Emory University
University of Hawaii (Manoa)
University of Idaho
Knox College
University of Chicago
Indiana University (Bloomington)
Vincennes University
Amherst College
Boston University
Emersen College
Harvard (college and law school)
University of Massachusetts (Amherst)
Frostburg State University
Michigan State University
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
Guilford College
University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill)
Minot State University
Dartmouth College
Princeton University
CUNY (Hunter)
Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Sarah Lawrence College
SUNY (Binghamton)
Denison University
Ohio State University
Wittenberg University
Oklahoma State University
Carnegie Mellon University
Franklin and Marshall College
Pennsylvania State University
Swarthmore College
Temple University
Vanderbilt University
Southern Methodist University
University of Texas (Pan American)
College of William and Mary
University of Virginia
Washington State University
University of Wisconsin (Whitewater)
Bethany College
West Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine

The first thing that struck me when I read through this list was how diverse all of these schools are. Big, small, public, private...clearly sexual assault issues are not limited to one type of institution.

The first thing that struck me was that there are no historically black colleges on the list.

Interesting. Any theories on that?

I daren't.

Two ways (at the least) to look at absence of HBCUs:

1. HBCUs are relatively fewer in number, many HBCUs have institutional problems and a lot to lose, and therefore HBCUs have stricter policies on certain matters including sexual assault and rape.

2. Sexual assault and rape tends to be silenced, in general, and such silencing is even more likely in predominantly racial and ethnic minority communities like HBCUs. The absence of HBCUs could mean there is a voice that is not yet heard.

A "link" to one of the news outlet reports on this story :


http://www.newson6.com/story/2540400...use-complaints

No women's colleges on the list, either. What I take from the list is that there really isn't any set of institutions that handles this problem well. The institutions are in a catch-22 because of the responsibilities they have toward both accusers and the accused.

Good point, Low C Flat.

I believe in innocent until proven guilty (I know, this is difficult) for the accused. I also know of 3 people over the past 10 years who were accused of sexual assault or rape and the schools were pressured to punish (including expulsion) the accused despite weak evidence including one situation where the accuser joked about possibly being a liar. The schools felt trapped.

I don't believe the standard for "guilt" should be anywhere near that of the formal judicial system. If the accused is assumed innocent, the accuser is therefore assumed to be lying. Why doesn't the accuser get the benefit of the doubt? You cannot simultaneously believe in the innocence of both parties. If it's his word against hers, SOMEONE is lying.

Now, do I think we should just go around kicking people out of school every time there is an accusation? No. But I think, in a university setting, the burden of proof should be much more akin to that of a civil trial, i.e. 51%, and that they should be able to look at things like patterns of behavior, e.g. if someone is accused three times but none of them can be "proven," you need to look at why this individual keeps getting accused.

Some of these schools supposedly failed to give the alleged victim the complete ability to speak out, failed to inform the alleged victim of her or his rights, and failed to protect the victim.

Victims deserve all of these things (they don't negate the legal aspect of offender innocence until proven guilt) so I am interested in the details of the schools' failures.

The issue is the "specialness" of a college campus. If a college chooses to take action against a student based on their investigation, that is fine, *but* that should be completely separate from whether a criminal investigation occurs. I have no problem with the concept of a Campus Security, but they should *not* have police powers. We would *never* allow Security at a shopping mall to give different justice based on whether one or both of the people involved is a shopper.

If a woman reports a rape, it shouldn't matter whether the event happened on campus, off campus, whether the attacker is a student or whether the woman is.

:mad::mad::mad:

I don't agree. People can have different memories of the same event, especially when alcohol is involved. If you're describing your memory honestly, that's not lying, even if a neutral third-party witness would have recounted things differently.

Campus Police are real police officers. The problem is that many times there is poor oversight of these cases. I read the NYT article about the Jameis Winston case recently. FSU completely botched that investigation, and it is hard to give them the benefit of the doubt that they weren't protecting their star athlete. Students have no option other than the campus police to pursue justice. If those institutions want to abdugate their responsibilities, other local authorities should be allowed to take over.

On some campuses, Campus Police are real officers.

The problem is, a campus judicial board is not a real court of law.

Our country has a criminal justice system for a reason. I cannot comprehend why campuses are expected to conduct their own separate judicial process.