| Blog and Media Roundup - Sunday, December 10, 2017; News Roundup | |
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| abb | Dec 10 2017, 06:12 AM Post #1 |
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http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/campus_sex_assault_investigations Campus sex assault investigations have become polarized and political By Wendy N. Davis December 2017 The last several years have seen a groundswell of legal complaints against colleges and universities—by both students who say they were victims of sexual assault on campus and students who say they were wrongfully sanctioned for alleged misconduct. Many have been high-profile cases; and all are high-stakes, with implications for ruining a college career—and worse—on both sides. In September, the Department of Education overturned the Obama administration’s guidelines on how campus sexual assault allegations should be handled and investigated, giving schools greater control over matters like what standard of proof is used by decision-makers. The reversal has polarized the legal community, with victims’ rights advocates concerned the move will dismantle years of progress and others sure the decision will offer needed due process protections. One thing is certain: The problem of campus sexual assault has been under scrutiny for a long time, with very little consensus on the best way for schools to discipline, and protect, all parties. In March 2014, a freshman at the University of Oregon went to an off-campus party where she was allegedly assaulted by three members of the school’s basketball team. The student, who said she had been drinking, told authorities she had been sexually assaulted at the party and then, later, at another apartment. The men—Brandon Austin, Dominic Artis and Damyean Dotson (who now plays for the New York Knicks)—said the sex was consensual. The Lane County district attorney declined to prosecute the men, stating that the case was unprovable. The situation garnered a great deal of publicity, leading to protests on campus that spring. Although the school initially suspended the three Oregon Ducks players, it later revised the suspension by allowing them to attend school and practice. Two of the men played in the team’s NCAA tournament games that same month, according to the Oregonian. But that May, the school suspended all three of the accused students for four to 10 years. As in many situations where students make accusations of sexual assault, the school’s response to the allegations angered all sides. The female student sued, claiming the school mishandled her complaint. Among other allegations, she argued that the school waited too long—more than two months—to fully suspend the players. Her lawsuit, like that of many other students who allege sex assault by peers, included claims that the school violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972—which prohibits schools that receive federal funds from discriminating based on gender. In 2015, the university settled with the student for $800,000. The three accused men are also pursuing claims against the school. They also argue that their Title IX rights were violated, and argue that pressure from protesters spurred the school to discipline them based on their gender. U.S. District Judge Michael McShane dismissed the men’s lawsuit in June. McShane wrote that they were suspended for violating the school’s conduct code, which requires students to obtain “explicit consent” before sexual penetration. The three are taking their cases to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at San Francisco. man in suit against wall John Clune: “They were talented students—great students in high school—and are now working at Target.” Photo by McCory James. CAUGHT IN THE CROSSHAIRS The University of Oregon isn’t alone in facing lawsuits after a sex assault accusation. Schools throughout the country have recently agreed to settlements with students who say they were assaulted, as well as those who have been accused. Florida State University agreed in January 2016 to pay former student Erica Kinsman $950,000 to resolve a Title IX lawsuit. Kinsman alleged that she was raped in 2012 by Jameis Winston, and that school officials responded to the allegation with deliberate indifference. Winston, who won the Heisman Trophy in 2013, denied the allegations and said the encounter was consensual. The University of Tennessee at Knoxville agreed in July 2016 to pay $2.48 million to settle allegations by eight women who said the school’s disciplinary program was biased in favor of athletes accused of sexual assault. And the University of Connecticut agreed in 2014 to pay $1.28 million to five students who alleged the school had mishandled separate complaints of sex assault and harassment. Perhaps most notoriously, Baylor College in Waco, Texas, is facing federal lawsuits over allegations of multiple assaults by members of the football team. One of the complaints alleged that between 2011 and 2014, at least 52 rapes were committed by at least 31 school football players. A school administrative review at Baylor cleared player Sam Ukwuachu of sexual misconduct in 2015. Several months later, a jury found him guilty of sexual assault, but that decision was overturned by an appellate court in March 2017. The appeals court ruled that text messages between the complainant and a friend of hers on the night of the incident were wrongly excluded from evidence. Ukwuachu had argued that those texts showed the accuser consented to have sex with him. In September, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed to review the state’s appeal of the lower court reversal. The Baptist school, which has already settled three lawsuits brought by victims, has recently implemented a number of changes to its procedures. Among other initiatives, the school now offers a tool that allows students to make online reports about sexual violence—including anonymous reports. Baylor also now requires annual Title IX training for faculty, staff and first-year students. But sex assault victims aren’t the only ones suing schools. At least 150 students accused of sexual misconduct have filed their own lawsuits, according to Title IX for All, which advocates for the rights of men and boys in education. On top of the lawsuits, the federal government has opened 445 civil rights investigations of colleges for how they handled reports of sexual assault and resolved 92 cases, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. At least 18 of those resolutions were “administrative closures,” in which the details aren’t publicly available. A number of others were withdrawn by students. But in many cases, the schools agreed to implement new policies and procedures for handling sex assault complaints. The extent to which the DOE will continue to pursue such investigations under the current administration is uncertain. TITLE IX AND BEYOND Eighteen years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Davis v. Monroe that schools can be liable for Title IX violations when students harass other students, if the schools are deliberately indifferent to the harassment. But observers trace much of the current legal activity surrounding campus sex assault to a more recent date—April 4, 2011, when the Obama administration issued what’s now known as the “Dear Colleague” letter. That game-changing directive, unveiled by former Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, said that Title IX required schools to investigate sex assault allegations and adjudicate the allegations under a “preponderance of the evidence” standard—the same as for civil lawsuits. The guidance also discouraged allowing students to question each other during the campus proceedings. Before that letter came out, 70 percent of schools already used a preponderance-of-the-evidence standard, while others—including Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, the University of Virginia and Yale—used a higher standard of either clear and convincing evidence or beyond a reasonable doubt, according to Inside Higher Ed. In September, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced a reversal, issuing new interim guidance on how to investigate and adjudicate campus sexual misconduct. In addition, the department opened a notice-and-comment procedure to determine the rules schools should follow when dealing with allegations of sexual assault. In a speech delivered at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, she said the Obama administration’s guidance “wasn’t working.” “The system established by the prior administration has failed too many students,” DeVos said. “Survivors, victims of a lack of due process, and campus administrators have all told me that the current approach does a disservice to everyone involved.” The 2011 Dear Colleague letter “put colleges squarely in the middle of the debate between the rights of the accused and the rights of people who’ve been victimized,” says Peter Lake, a Stetson University law professor and an expert in Title IX compliance. Schools that don’t follow the guidelines potentially faced the loss of federal funding. But schools that don’t protect the rights of accused students also confront the prospect of lawsuits. Complicating matters is the murky nature of some sex assault allegations. These incidents often occur when both parties have been drinking, clouding judgment and memory. Often the only witnesses are the two people involved, and they may have very different perceptions of the events. Given all this, the Trump administration’s new position has alarmed victims’ rights advocates, who fully supported the prior administration’s stance that offered greater protection for women during investigations. They say that many schools didn’t treat sex assault allegations seriously enough in the past, often resulting in victims dropping out of school—while the alleged assailant remained on campus. “In a lot of these cases, they never have the strength and courage to go back to school,” says Boulder, Colorado, lawyer John Clune, who represents victims in Title IX lawsuits throughout the country, including the student who sued the University of Oregon. Clune estimates that as many as half of the students he’s represented left school after being assaulted. “They were talented students—great students in high school—and are now working at Target,” he says. Steve Healy, CEO of Burlington, Vermont-based school security consultancy Margolis Healy & Associates, adds that many accusers have been frustrated by schools’ responses to sex assault allegations. “Victims have been coming forward for years, saying they didn’t feel they were getting the support and the transparency they needed and wanted when they brought these cases to an institution,” says Healy, who previously served as director of public safety at Princeton University. “Victims are fed up that they’re not believed, that they’re blamed for whatever incident happened, and that authorities aren’t taking their complaint seriously.” But lawyers who represent accused students say the Dear Colleague letter unfairly tilted the field against them. Defense lawyers argue that the school officials who investigate these cases often are biased in favor of accusers, and that the level of proof is frequently inadequate. “There are massive problems with the way that schools adjudicate these cases,” says Justin Dillon, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who has two cases pending against schools and one against the DOE’s Office for Civil Rights. In one of those cases, a former University of Virginia law student was accused of having sex with a classmate who was too drunk to consent. He told school officials that the woman didn’t appear intoxicated on the night of the encounter. An adjudicator said the case was “very close” and “very difficult,” but that the evidence tipped “slightly” in favor of finding the man responsible for the charges, according to the male student’s complaint against the OCR. The adjudicator suggested that a higher standard of proof would have tipped the scales in the accused’s favor, according to the complaint. Dillon says the lawsuit seeks “to create a systemic fix” to perceived flaws in schools’ current systems. Like many other advocates for accused students, he contends that many school investigators are inclined to take the accusers’ side. “Most of the people who run this process believe that you should always believe the accuser,” he says. “They set up a system that makes that incredibly easy to do.” The American College of Trial Lawyers is among the groups that have criticized the Obama administration’s stance. “In a well-intentioned effort to address the significant problem of campus sexual assault, OCR has established investigative and disciplinary procedures that, in application, are in many cases fundamentally unfair to students accused of sexual misconduct,” the organization said in a white paper published earlier this year. Pamela Robillard Mackey, a lawyer in Denver, chaired the American College of Trial Lawyers task force that issued the report. She says the letter essentially forced many colleges to take the paradigm they had developed for policing honor code violations, whether for plagiarism or making too much noise in the dorms, and apply it to sex assault—“something far more serious, with lifelong consequences for both the accused and accuser.” “They weren’t particularly well-equipped to do it,” Mackey adds. “Universities were very much trying to comply with the Dear Colleague letter and also honor the women who were claiming to be sexually assaulted,” Mackey says. But, in the course of trying to do so, schools “weren’t as mindful to what was happening to the accused.” In May 2016, a group of 21 prominent law professors issued an open letter criticizing the administration’s directives to schools. “Unfortunately, OCR’s relentless pressure on institutions to respond aggressively to sexual assault allegations has undermined the neutrality of many campus investigators and adjudicators by forcing them to consider the broader financial impact of their actions,” the law professors wrote. The professors added that some schools question accused students before informing them of their alleged violations, and that many school officials deny students access to witnesses or evidence that could clear them. The upshot, according to the academics, is that innocent students are deprived of a college education and relegated “to a lifetime of diminished income and social stigmatization as sexual offenders.” “It’s awful to be victimized, but also awful to be wrongly accused and have to live with suspension or termination for the rest of your life,” says Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Bartholet, one of the signatories. She points out that Harvard Law requires the higher standard of clear and convincing evidence in other disciplinary situations, including cases where students allegedly committed crimes like nonsexual assault. “The clear and convincing standard seems appropriate with a sanction as serious as being thrown out of college on the basis of a sexual assault charge, which can clearly be a career-ending incident,” she says. BURDEN OF PROOF Some individual states are pushing back against a perception that colleges aren’t treating accused students fairly. In 2013, North Carolina became the first state in the country to pass a law specifying that students at public colleges are entitled to hire lawyers to represent them at campus judiciary proceedings. A few observers question whether colleges should be adjudicating criminal matters at all. Others counter that universities have always had the ability to enforce codes of conduct as they see fit, and that they regularly adjudicate violations such as plagiarism and cheating. But advocates for victims, like Laura Dunn, founder of the D.C. nonprofit SurvJustice, note that schools are entitled to enforce their honor codes—which impose different requirements than the criminal justice system and carry different consequences. “They have no obligation to keep anyone on campus,” says Dunn, a member of the ABA’s Commission on Domestic & Sexual Violence. She also notes that some students who have been thrown out of one school following sexual misconduct allegations have gone on to enter other schools. Durham, North Carolina, attorney Kerry Sutton, who represented the captain on the Duke lacrosse team—exonerated of sexual assault in 2007—counters that school adjudications can have dramatic, life-altering consequences. “It crushes the kids. It crushes the families. The parents are in tears on the phone because the arc of their son’s future has changed,” says Sutton, who now represents accused students full time. She adds that many of these cases involve people who know each other, and that virtually all involve heavy drinking. People who are drunk may not be capable of consenting to sex—though whether that’s the case often depends on matters including how incapacitated they are. Often, subsequent interactions further confuse the issue. For example, accused students and their alleged victims sometimes trade text messages or communicate on social media after an incident. Those exchanges can shed new light on the allegations—but the digital media trail can also be subject to interpretation. Stetson University’s Lake points out that some predators have “gotten better at covering their tracks” by attempting to immediately create evidence that would clear them of wrongdoing. For instance, he says, some will “immediately descend on a victim with text messages and Snapchats to create a digital record that makes it look like a misunderstanding.” In rejecting the Obama-era guidance, DeVos specifically noted the concerns about the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard raised by the American College of Trial Lawyers. She also cited a June proposal by a task force of the American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section, which does not reflect official ABA policy and has been rejected by other sections and divisions within the association. The CJS recommendations call for a panel of at least three people—separate from whoever investigated the allegations—to decide whether any policies were violated. The recommendations say an accused student should be found responsible only if the panel unanimously agrees. “We understood that the system was regarded as being so broken that it was highly likely the new administration was going to come in and take some steps in this area,” says Andrew Boutros, a Seyfarth Shaw partner who chaired the ABA’s task force. “Our recommendation was that schools should move away from the single investigatory model, where the investigator is also the decision-maker.” The task force also recommended that students not question each other directly but have the opportunity to submit questions to a decision-maker, who would then decide whether to ask them. “The task force’s recommendations provide less opportunity for confrontation than is provided by the Sixth Amendment; however, they do provide for the opportunity for both parties to ask questions through the hearing chair,” the report states. “In addition, they do not allow either side to present their personal statement about what occurred unless they are willing to be questioned by both the school and indirectly by the other party.” In its report, the CJS task force notes that the recommendations “have not been endorsed by any other section of the ABA.” And in fact, for the past two years, the ABA Commission on Domestic & Sexual Violence has been quietly working on a U.S. Department of Justice-funded grant to develop standards for handling campus sexual assault cases. “It’s a problem that this task force report is being widely viewed, reported and used as ABA policy when it is not,” says Mark Schickman, who is of counsel at Freeland, Cooper & Foreman in San Francisco and chairs the commission. “It is a single section task force report, which is being broadly misused.” Schickman says that despite the controversy over the DOE’s new guidelines, the commission is not weighing in with recommendations until its research is complete; a report will be released next year. The findings will be used to train judges, prosecutors and mental health providers, in addition to suggesting best practices for dealing with “the whole process,” he says. One of the primary concerns: ensuring that sex assaults are not treated as strictly a criminal justice issue. “To require a heightened burden of proof before you can impose remedial and restorative actions is not appropriate,” Schickman says, likening campus sexual assault to actions an employer might take in a workplace with similar allegations. “For the past several years, the 2011 and 2014 guidelines were recognized as appropriate guidance in the field, and this [task force] report is being used to undercut that.” TROUBLING ENCOUNTERS This much is clear: Many students who have made accusations, as well as those who have been accused, feel like they didn’t receive justice. Raechel Liska, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater, where she was in the ROTC program, says she was sexually assaulted by another ROTC student in October 2014. She also believes she was drugged while at the bar. When she woke up the next morning, she felt like something was “seriously wrong” and went to the hospital. The male student reportedly said they had a consensual sexual encounter. Liska made a report to school officials, but says the administration mishandled the complaint. She says she met alone with the dean of students and believed the dean was taking her allegations seriously. The dean found the complaint unsubstantiated—a decision communicated to Liska via email. “I actually, physically, dropped to the floor,” Liska says. “I was under the impression she was listening to me when I was talking to her. I put a lot of faith in the university justice system.” Liska believes the dean reached her conclusion after an incomplete investigation that relied on statements by the male student and his friends. “The big thing that she focused on was body language,” she says. “I don’t understand how someone who wasn’t there can say my body language gave consent.” Liska, who had a 4.0 grade point average, says she no longer wanted to attend ROTC classes where she would have to be in close contact with her alleged assailant. She says the school offered that she could drive to the Madison campus to take those classes, but doing so would have required making a two-hour round trip four times a week. Liska, who is now represented by SurvJustice, filed a Title IX complaint. She also is pursuing a complaint with the military against her alleged assailant. AFFIRMATIVE CONSENT In April, the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division ordered the State University of New York at Potsdam to reinstate Benjamin Haug, a former student expelled for allegedly violating the school’s code of conduct by having sex with another student without first obtaining her explicit consent. That matter stemmed from an encounter during the first week of Haug’s freshman year. On Sept. 7, 2014, Haug had sex in a dorm room with a female student he had been friends with for several years. The woman later reported to campus police that she had been sexually assaulted—though she also said she hadn’t declined to have sex. At SUNY, as at a growing number of schools nationwide, students are required to obtain “affirmative consent” before engaging in sexual activity. Haug was summoned to a disciplinary hearing, presided over by a three-person board. The accuser didn’t appear at the hearing. Instead, the school’s student conduct director read from her notes about the accuser’s account of the incident. Haug, who came to the hearing with a friend, also testified about his version of events. He hadn’t yet told his parents what was happening and didn’t have an attorney. “I really didn’t think it was going to be a big deal at that point,” Haug says of the hearing. “I didn’t know that when I walked in there, it was going to be a slaughterhouse. It wasn’t about finding out if I was innocent. It was about finding out how severe my punishment was going to be.” The hearing board decided that Haug should be suspended for one semester. He was also told to read two books—one relating to sexual conduct and consent and one relating to alcohol—and to write 10-page essays on each. Haug, a percussionist, was attending SUNY on a music scholarship, which he says he would lose if suspended. After learning of the decision, he appealed to a school review board, which increased the penalty to expulsion. Haug’s family then retained a lawyer, who challenged SUNY’s decision in court. A divided New York appeals court ordered SUNY to reinstate Haug. The appellate court ruled 3-2 that the hearsay evidence “did not constitute substantial evidence to support the determination” made by SUNY. The state is moving forward with an appeal. Haug’s lawyer, Lloyd Grandy of Ogdensburg, New York, says his client was railroaded. “His version of the events was, at the very least, not given a lot of weight,” Grandy says. A former prosecutor, Grandy says he hadn’t previously handled a lawsuit stemming from a school disciplinary matter. Doing so was eye-opening. “I realized just how scary it really is when you get wrapped up in one of these things—especially on the side of the alleged offender,” he says. “If you exert some sort of power or authority over someone, you need to be careful about how you do that,” he says. “If you’re going to take away from someone thousands of dollars, if you’re going to kick them out of your institution, if you’re going to hold their educational careers hostage while some suspensionary or expulsionary period runs, then you can’t tell me you’re not doing something serious enough to warrant safeguards.” Haug never finished his college education. He now works as a welder in Buffalo. COLUMBIA CONTROVERSY On the federal level, in July 2016 the 2nd Circuit at New York City reinstated a Columbia University student’s suit accusing the school of violating his Title IX rights by acting with “sex bias” in investigating and suspending him. The student in that case said he was suspended for two years after a consensual sexual encounter with another student, identified in court papers only as Jane Doe. In his version of the incident, as set out in the complaint, he and Doe spoke in a campus lounge in the early morning hours of May 12, 2013, went out for a walk, and then eventually went back to her suite, where they had sex in the bathroom. That September, four months after the incident, he was informed that he had been accused of engaging in nonconsensual sexual intercourse, according to the complaint. That same month, he was told that Columbia had issued an order forbidding him from having contact with the female student, and also prohibiting him from accessing any residence halls. He alleged that he met with the school’s Title IX investigator and told her about witnesses who were in the lounge, but that she didn’t contact those people. The following February, Columbia determined he violated the school’s policies by coercing Doe. He was suspended until the fall of 2015. He appealed, as did his accuser—who argued that the sanction was too severe. But the dean of Columbia College, James Valentini, denied both appeals. He said the Title IX officer had discretion about which witnesses to interview, and that no witness was present for the encounter itself. The school defended its policies in court, arguing they “are carefully drawn to account for the interests of all students—including the complaining student and the respondent—and to advance the educational mission of the university.” A trial judge dismissed the lawsuit, but the 2nd Circuit reinstated it last year. The matter was withdrawn in January after the parties reached a confidential settlement. The accused’s lawyer, Andrew Miltenberg of New York City, is among those who say schools aren’t in a good position to adjudicate crimes like sex assault. “I don’t think they’re currently equipped, either with the personnel or from an institutional knowledge standpoint, to handle these things,” says Miltenberg, who has represented more than 100 accused students. If schools continue to judge these types of cases, Miltenberg says, there should be changes, including a more measured response by schools and more rights for accused students. “There needs to be a fuller opportunity for people to defend themselves.” Lawyer and journalist Wendy N. Davis lives in New York City. This article was published in the December 2017 issue of the ABA Journal with the title "From Campus to Courtroom: Sex assault investigations have become polarized and political." Edited by abb, Dec 10 2017, 06:13 AM.
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| abb | Dec 10 2017, 06:18 AM Post #2 |
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https://dailynorthwestern.com/2017/12/09/lateststories/hearing-set-former-student-sues-university-claiming-grievous-mishandling-sexual-assault-investigation-excluded-nu/ Hearing set after former student sues University, claiming ‘grievous mishandling’ of sexual assault investigation excluded him from NU Erica Snow, Campus Editor December 9, 2017 A former Northwestern student is suing the University after a “grievous mishandling” of an investigation following sexual assault allegations against him, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by The Daily. The former student sued the University in September under the pseudonym John Doe, alleging NU’s sexual misconduct policy and hearing process “reflected the University’s intentional, institutionalized gender bias,” the lawsuit claims. A hearing is scheduled for Jan. 11, according to a copy of a docket entry obtained by The Daily. The investigation resulted in the male student being excluded from NU, according to the lawsuit. Exclusion consists of a separation from the university for a minimum of two years and requires students to reapply for admission and receive approval from Patricia Telles-Irvin, vice president for student affairs. Telles-Irvin declined to comment for this story. The September lawsuit details an alleged sexual interaction between Doe and his then-girlfriend, referred to as Jane Roe. At the time, Doe was a freshman and Roe was a sophomore, the suit says. The lawsuit alleges that in March 2015, Roe consented to giving Doe oral sex “through her words and actions.” According to the lawsuit, however, Roe alleged during a subsequent investigation that the incident had been a “forcible rape” and that Doe “jabbed and forced his penis into her mouth, thrust it back and forth, choking her, stopped after one minute, and then left.” Jonathan Cyrluk, an attorney representing Doe, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Adam Hoeflich, an attorney representing NU, declined to comment. University spokesman Bob Rowley said NU does not comment on pending litigation. In a statement, the University said it is monitoring existing state laws and potential changes to federal guidelines on Title IX. “Northwestern continues to be committed to fostering an environment in which all members of the campus community are safe, secure, and free from sexual misconduct of any form,” the statement said. “Sexual misconduct violates the community values and principles of our institution and disrupts the living, learning and working environment for students, faculty, staff and other community members.” Shortly after the March 2015 incident, Doe broke up with his girlfriend at a party in front of their friends, the lawsuit claims. Doe alleges in the suit that Roe made up a false rape accusation after the breakup. According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, a review of research showed the prevalence of false reporting of sexual assault is between 2 percent and 10 percent. One month later, the lawsuit alleges, Roe texted Doe “that their ‘last time’ having sex was ‘borderline sexual assault,’” which Doe immediately denied. The text came amid “chatty” text messages discussing “Game of Thrones” and other mundane topics, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges Roe “repeatedly sought out” Doe for relationship advice after her first accusation. She later texted him on Sept. 22, 2015, claiming the March incident was sexual assault, according to the lawsuit. The text came amid other messages in which Roe was “pleasant” to Doe, the suit claims. In late September, Doe alleged that one of Roe’s sorority sisters screamed curses at him at a football game, shouted he was a “‘sexual assault perpetrator,’ and grabbed for his throat attempting to choke him,” according to the lawsuit. When Doe reported the incident to Tara Sullivan, then-director of the Office of Student Conduct and deputy Title IX coordinator, he was told that if he filed a complaint, the office would open an investigation against him due to the sexual assault claim, according to the lawsuit. Sullivan, who left NU in late 2016, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Lucas Christain, current director of the Office of Student Conduct, declined to comment. According to the lawsuit, when Doe’s parents told Dean of Students Todd Adams about the incident at the football game, “the University did nothing.” Adams declined to comment for this story. The lawsuit details a “final rift” in October 2015, when Roe allegedly asked Doe to lie to a professor so he could miss class and help with their student group’s membership tryouts, but Doe refused. The lawsuit claims Roe then texted Doe on Oct. 14, calling the March incident rape and demanding he take a leave of absence from their group. According to the suit, he did, feeling “falsely accused and unfairly treated.” The suit claims Roe’s accusation spread among their group until it eventually reached the Office of Student Conduct. Doe said in the suit he was deterred from reporting the alleged physical assault with Roe’s sorority sister because Sullivan “indirectly but clearly communicated” to him that he would be charged with retaliation in addition to sexual assault and harassment. His lawsuit criticizes the University’s single-investigator hearing process in which a Title IX investigator interviews both parties separately and presents findings to a panel. The complainant and the respondent also speak with the panel, which weighs statements made by all parties. According to the lawsuit, the investigator and the panel “relied solely on Jane’s word” and her “cherry-picked” evidence to rule in her favor while applying a “double standard” and discounting Doe’s evidence. “This deliberate skewing of the evidence by the investigator and Hearing Panel violated both the University’s contractual obligations to conduct a fair and impartial process and Title IX’s prohibition against disparate treatment based on gender,” the lawsuit claims. Joan Slavin, NU’s Title IX coordinator at the time, declined to comment for this story. Dwight Hamilton, associate vice president for equity and current Title IX coordinator, deferred comment to University spokesman Al Cubbage, who declined to comment due to pending litigation. The University said in its statement that NU’s policy on sexual misconduct handles complaints “in a manner that is prompt, fair, and impartial.” Following the hearing panel’s decision to exclude Doe for two years, he appealed to an Appellate Panel. The body rejected the initial finding of forcible rape, but still found Doe responsible for sexual assault stemming from “‘emotional and verbal coercion,’” according to the lawsuit. But the suit claims Roe never accused him of those things. Since his exclusion, Doe has been rejected from 11 schools after “Northwestern has branded John as a sexual offender,” the lawsuit claims. He has also experienced “severe emotional and physical distress,” including expressing “a desire to kill himself,” according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, requests that the court grant injunctive relief by ordering the University to reverse and expunge its findings. The lawsuit also requests that the court order NU to award compensatory damages and pay attorney fees, among other demands. Email: ericasnow2019@u.northwestern.edu Twitter: @ericasnoww |
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| abb | Dec 10 2017, 06:19 AM Post #3 |
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http://www.startribune.com/could-cascade-of-allegations-send-metoo-movement-off-the-rails/463076833/ Could cascade of allegations send #MeToo movement off the rails? Some fear the cultural shift in the movement engenders backlash. By Pam Louwagie Star Tribune December 9, 2017 — 10:12pm The criticism came swiftly last week after the Atlantic magazine published a writer’s account stating that Sen. Al Franken “groped” her in 2009 by putting his hand on her waist during a photo op, “grabbing a handful of flesh” and squeezing at least twice. “I’m sorry, is that sexual assault now? To squeeze someone’s waist?” one Twitter user wrote. “And this is your definition of a grope? Come on! This accusation trivializes real predation and abuse. Knock it off!” a woman echoed on Facebook. “We are officially #offtherails,” tweeted another. It was the type of backlash some feared. As a reckoning over sexual harassment sweeps the country, leaders in business, academia and other walks of life are pushing to sustain the momentum and ensure a positive, lasting cultural change without it getting derailed by politics, social media frenzies and outsized responses to infractions many deem small. “There’s just too much putting everything into one big bucket instead of looking at the nuance,” said Fran Sepler, a Minneapolis human resources consultant who has helped develop training for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. As a cascade of allegations spreads from Hollywood moguls to powerful lawmakers in recent months, what started as a “really extraordinary conversation” about the need for industries to examine their cultures and people feeling emboldened to speak out is, in some instances, getting politicized and weaponized, Sepler said. As a result, she added, it’s turned the discussion into “something a little more complicated and a little more nasty and I think a little less productive.” Silicon Valley executive Sheryl Sandberg cautioned early last week that she’d heard “the rumblings of a backlash,” including men becoming afraid to hire women. Conservative columnist Christine Flowers, in Philadelphia, called the #MeToo movement denouncing sexual assault and harassment “unwieldy and unforgiving, mixing all sorts of conduct together and retroactively stigmatizing acts that — until the social media age — were considered boorish and brutish but not capital offenses.” Those who have spent part of their careers working to end sexual harassment are finding that the digital age has catapulted society into uncharted territory on the issue, bringing new voice to the debate while also posing a danger of distracting from it. To change the culture, they say, people need a sense that fair process will prevail and responses will be commensurate to the behavior. Society needs to stay focused on tackling the ubiquitous confirmed cases of sexual harassment and assault, they say. “We lose the opportunity for education if everything is [seen as] a criminal offense,” said Hamline University business Prof. Peggy Andrews, a longtime human resources and management consultant. “On the other hand, we’ve allowed criminal offenses to go unpunished for so long.” Watershed moment The recent wave of attention and awareness is widely seen as a long-overdue milestone, empowering victims to speak up while toppling perpetrators. It flooded social media when victims of sexual harassment and assault started typing #MeToo on their accounts after allegations were lodged against Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein. “I think this is a watershed moment for relations between the genders and this whole issue of harassment in general,” said University of Minnesota School of Public Health Dean John Finnegan, who is coleading a multidisciplinary project to tackle sexual harassment and assault on campus. “So many women … don’t live and breathe this, but they talk about a lifetime of indignities that they have suffered … I think this is really a wake-up call to American culture, and I really, really hope that we’re able to benefit from this in the long run.” While distinctions need to be made between the severity of allegations, it all is part of a continuum that “has to do with a sense of entitlement” by the perpetrators, said political science Prof. Jill Locke, who directs the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Program at Gustavus Adolphus College. People have to be careful about sending a message that victims can’t come forward unless certain criteria are met, she said. If someone comes forward alleging something that people on social media don’t think is a big deal, she said, then people should instead “focus on the plethora of cases that are a big deal and do something about those.” Sepler, who has spent 30 years investigating harassment claims as part of her work, said that she thinks that “99.9 percent of the people who come forward claiming they’ve been sexually harassed believe they’ve been sexually harassed … Whether the behavior they’re complaining about rises to the very high bar of unlawful harassment, and whether they feel sexually harassed are two different questions.” A one-time, awkward hug, for instance, won’t typically get someone fired, human resources professionals said, though it might yield a conversation. So, getting caught up in too much debate about “gray areas” of social interaction isn’t productive, they say. “Personally, I don’t see that it’s any more gray now than it’s ever been,” said Susan Strauss, a trainer, consultant and harassment and bullying investigator based in Burnsville. Even workplace flirting and dating will not end, she and some others predicted, nor should companies expect it to. “You just use common sense,” she said. “If you ask somebody out and they say ‘No’ … then you say, ‘You know what, I’m sorry. I didn’t intend for that to be offensive and won’t do it again.’ ” Creating new norms Lasting change will require specific cultural shifts, Finnegan and others say. Male and female bystanders can help define what is considered acceptable by letting offenders know when a mildly lewd joke isn’t appropriate or when they see unwelcome interactions taking place. “That helps people who are likely to harass or do other things, they will see that and they will recognize ‘Oh, the norm here is different,’ ” Finnegan said. Hollywood can play a role, too, by putting story lines about harassment into movies and television, Finnegan said. Fewer nondisclosure agreements in legal settlements will also help to show victims that action has been taken in cases, and will “stop allowing people to hide behind their settlement agreements,” said Minneapolis employment attorney Stacey DeKalb. Most critical for companies, schools and other institutions is for leaders to set a respectful tone, women’s advocates agree. Highlighting examples of positive behavior is more effective than focusing on what people should not do. In the end, though, many say, much of the hoped-for change will come down to finding ways for people to have potentially uncomfortable conversations with others. “We’re human and we’re awkward; we need more pathways to have awkward conversations without fear of legal reprisals,” Andrews, the Hamline professor, said. Speaking up at the outset Although the law says victims never have to directly confront someone who is harassing them, that doesn’t mean victims shouldn’t, Sepler said. While that might be the best way to address harassment from a manager, the more common peer-to-peer harassment can often be handled face to face and on the spot. “I think there’s a powerful place for women to take on their own agency in those situations where they’re not afraid of reprisal and speak up for themselves or speak up for others,” said Sepler, who teaches people how to do it. At company trainings, Sepler presents a scenario where someone is unknowingly annoying a co-worker — tapping their toes or looking at them in a way that makes them feel gross. “Would you rather that they tell you? Or would you rather that they report you to human resources?” Sepler asks. “One hundred percent of people say, ‘I would rather they tell me.’ ” Addressing it with them can be a gift if it’s presented in the right spirit, she says. That may include telling the person that they are appreciated and that you don’t want to see their success derailed. “We’re learning that if you actually tell them what they’re doing is bugging you, there’s a good chance that they’ll stop,” she said, “and that they won’t retaliate against you, if you do it in a way that’s you know, ‘Hey, you know, I really like you, but I’m not a hugger.’ ” pam.louwagie@startribune.com 612-673-7102 |
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9:18 AM Jul 11