There’s an uncomfortable balancing act going on at colleges and universities across the country, and educators have found themselves confronting a complicated question.
How do you protect your students against sexual assault while preserving the rights of the accused?
Amherst College is the latest institution to get hit with this problem. A former student sued the prestigious school yesterday, claiming that he was expelled after being wrongfully accused in 2013 of sexually assaulting a female classmate.
His attorneys said the school’s investigation was flawed, and that Amherst made an example out of him “during a period of relentless and well-publicized accusations” against the school for “failing to protect female students from sexual assault.”
In a he-said, she-said case, John Doe’s attorneys said their client was unfairly punished by a reactionary system that didn’t afford any due process.
The private college is so concerned about the “nature of this situation” that it won’t comment by phone. In a written statement, it said its disciplinary process is “fair to all parties” and in accordance with mandates laid down by the U.S. Department of Education and its Office of Civil Rights.
The school believes it’s on the right side of the battle against sexual assaults on campus. But what is “right” isn’t always so clear.
In 2011, the DOE sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to schools across the country to forcefully remind them of their obligations under ?federal law to crack down ?on sexual harassment on campus.
The federal civil rights office, driven by victim advocacy groups looking for reforms, began enforcing these requirements — and colleges made massive changes in how they handle allegations of sexual assault.
“They panicked, with a capital ‘P,’ ” said Brett Sokolow, an attorney who has advised hundreds of colleges on how to deal with sexual misconduct. “In panicking in response to this strong enforcement, campuses overcorrected.”
And that “overcorrection” led to cases where the accused had the deck stacked against them — they were in effect guilty unless they could prove their innocence.
That, in turn, led to cases like this one involving Amherst where the accused predator would file suit against the university for espousing an unfair process.
Now that kind of litigation is forcing schools to rethink and readjust again. The pendulum continues to swing, and observers, including the parents of college kids, are waiting for it to find a comfortable medium.
“I think it’s going in the right direction,” Sokolow said. “I don’t want a process that protects the rights of the accused more than the victim, and I don’t want a process that protects the victim more than the rights of the accused. You have zero margin for error here.”
