| Blog and Media Roundup - Thursday, January 18, 2018; News Roundup | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 18 2018, 04:45 AM (122 Views) | |
| abb | Jan 18 2018, 04:45 AM Post #1 |
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https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/01/18/ithaca-college-president-spotlight-years-after-court-case Digging Into a President's Past Ithaca College president's 2001 no-contest plea receives new scrutiny, even though she says she entered it under extreme circumstances and has been up front about her past. By Rick Seltzer January 18, 2018 More than 16 years ago, Shirley M. Collado pleaded no contest to a count of misdemeanor sexual abuse in D.C. Superior Court. She had been charged with allegedly touching in a sexual manner a therapy patient she was treating. The patient had also lived with Collado for a short time after she had been treated by Collado. Today, Collado is the president of Ithaca College. She acknowledges inviting the patient into her home, and she has publicly confirmed pleading no contest in court. But she says she delivered the plea under extreme circumstances and did not commit the touching or other acts that were alleged. On the contrary, she was trying to help someone in need at a time when she herself was suffering her own intense emotional pain, she says. The court case and surrounding allegations have been thrust into the limelight this week after student newspapers published detailed accounts of allegations and events said to have taken place when Collado was training as a trauma therapist at the Center at the Psychiatric Institute of Washington. The Ithacan published an extensive piece Tuesday. So did The Vanderbilt Hustler, which covers Vanderbilt University, where Collado is a member of the Board of Trust. Both publications wrote about the case after receiving anonymous packages in the mail containing court documents. It is a harsh turn of events for a president who received attention for her exceptional personal history when she was hired last year. Collado, the daughter of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, has been noted as the first college president who entered higher education through the Posse Foundation, which sends groups of disadvantaged students to enroll together at colleges. In response to the new scrutiny of Collado’s past, Ithaca College’s Board of Trustees has voiced strong support for her. Trustees say they were well aware of the case when they hired Collado and that it was part of vetting that took place before she was publicly named Ithaca’s incoming president in February. Collado has posted her own lengthy statement denying any sexual impropriety and saying that she pleaded no contest at a time when she was pressed financially and emotionally. The situation is notable because it comes at a time when allegations of sexual assault, harassment and impropriety -- some of them dating back many years -- have rocked numerous college campuses and leadership teams. But it also stands out because it offers an unexpected reflection at the top levels of higher ed of a criminal justice system some say is tilted against the poor. Unlike many college presidents, Collado comes from a background of limited means and says money played a factor in her plea at a time when her career was just starting many years ago. In addition, Collado’s and Ithaca’s willingness to address the situation head-on has caught the attention of many crisis communication professionals. “This is not new news,” Collado said in a telephone interview with Inside Higher Ed. “This is a story that I shared very, very openly before I became president. It’s public record, highly visible.” Publicly Discussing a Plea Collado has publicly referenced the case virtually from the moment she was announced as Ithaca College’s incoming president in February. The college posted a Q&A with Collado on March 1 that explained some of the history. A former patient who “struggled with significant psychological disorders” sought Collado for help when she didn’t have anywhere to go, she said in the Q&A. Collado said she “went out of my way to help her” but that it backfired because she was not in a position to help. The incident took place shortly after Collado’s husband committed suicide about three years into their marriage, Collado wrote. The former patient made “claims against me,” Collado said in the Q&A. She said she fought the claims for a while but did not have the resources or social capital to continue. “I was in my 20s, and I had just tragically lost my husband, so I decided to take steps to end the legal action so that I could focus on taking care of myself and moving on with my life,” she said in the Q&A. “It was a very difficult decision, but it’s the kind of decision that young people face daily when they feel they have no options, no resources, and no outside support.” The Ithacan included far more detail in the article it published this week. Collado pleaded nolo contendere, or no contest, in August 2001 to a single charge of placing a hand on a patient’s clothed breast with sexual intent, the student newspaper wrote. Collado was a 28-year-old recent graduate of Duke University and the patient’s therapist at the time the incident was alleged to have taken place. The nolo contendere plea meant Collado was accepting conviction but not admitting guilt. After such a plea, a case continues as if a guilty plea was entered. Collado received a 30-day suspended sentence, 18 months of supervised probation, an order to complete 80 hours of community service and a $250 fine. She was ordered to stay away from the patient. The student newspaper’s account also details allegations that the patient and Collado kissed and had other sexual encounters. Court documents from prosecutors show employees at the center believed the patient’s allegations, The Ithacan wrote. Collado denied the allegations again in her interview with Inside Higher Ed. Her plea covered one situation: putting a hand on the body outside of clothing, she said. She pleaded no contest because of financial and emotional constraints but denies all allegations through and through. She did not have a sexual or romantic relationship with the patient -- and the patient was no longer her patient during the short time when they lived in the same home, she said. Although she tried to help the patient by offering her a place to live, it became clear to Collado that she had not made a good choice, she said. A therapist allowing a former patient to live with her violates professional norms. “I was going through my own grief and loss, and I needed to move on, and I did my very best to make that transition as smooth as possible,” Collado said. “Shortly after that, and only after that decision, this person got in touch with the Center and made allegations about behavior that had occurred on the unit, and I was floored.” Scrutinizing a Presidential Candidate’s Past Those most familiar with the search process that led to Collado’s hiring say they were aware of the case early on. It came up “in conjunction” with a background check, said Jim Nolan, a trustee who chaired the search committee and chairs the Ithaca Board of Trustees’ governance committee. Nolan declined to describe in additional detail how the case was discovered -- if the then candidate for president brought it to the college’s attention or if it was discovered by the college in the due diligence process. But he said both the board and search committee had comprehensive discussions about the issue. “There was a point in time we felt it was really important for Shirley to have the conversation with all the search committee members,” he said. “As board members, we had access to the court documents. And we talked to the on-campus members of the search committee about the pertinent details and made them aware.” Some of the information was sensitive and needed to be put into context, Nolan said. Collado’s references were also fully checked. Several faculty members who were on the search committee felt that the process was the right one to follow, given the sensitive and painful nature of the allegations and the time of Collado’s life in which they took place. The committee needed to be told about the case, said Claire Gleitman, an English professor and president of the Faculty Senate for Ithaca’s School of Humanities and Sciences, who was on the search committee. Committee members were given an appropriate amount of information for making a recommendation, she said. Seeing the new details does not change Gleitman’s belief that the process and recommendation to hire Collado were appropriate. “These days, the past is never past,” Gleitman said. “The people I’ve heard from -- and I’ve heard from a fair handful -- have been expressing very strong support for President Collado and regret on her behalf.” Asked whether a therapist living with a former patient was a lapse in judgment, Gleitman said it is clear in retrospect the action was a mistake. But it was made at a time when Collado had lost her husband and was trying to act out of compassion. “I think it was an error of judgment that is both understandable and also, as far as I can tell, an entirely isolated incident,” Gleitman said. “I don’t think we see any evidence whatsoever of further errors in judgment that would lead us to think it was a character flaw. I think it’s really important to emphasize that this was an isolated event that happened in her past.” A Way Forward? College presidents are expected to set the agenda, inspire students, faculty and staff, and raise money from donors. Those are tasks that might be difficult given the unwelcome attention foisted upon Collado this week. Yet her backers do not think her ability to lead will be compromised. The president is carrying on during a brief but intense period of scrutiny, Gleitman said. Nolan, the trustee and search committee chair, described the events from 2000 and 2001 as formative experiences for the president. “I would say the life events that people experience form, over time, their judgment,” Nolan said. “It becomes part of the fabric of how people make decisions.” Meanwhile, broader faculty reaction has been muted. Few have reached out to discuss the topic with Thomas Swensen, a professor and chair of Ithaca’s department of exercise and sport sciences who chairs the college’s Faculty Council and was also on the search committee that selected Collado. “The lack of comments right now is maybe a statement,” he said. “I’m not quite sure how to interpret it.” The attempts to share information and be open have likely helped the college in the public eye, according to crisis communication experts. In many ways, they have made moves that are right out of the playbook for handling potentially damaging information. Leaders sometimes have an instinct to hide in similar situations, said Susan Jacobson, president of the Philadelphia-based public relations firm Jacobson Strategic Communications. “It’s not a time to hide,” she said. “This is a time when she’s really got to show strength through adversity. People are really watching her.” The student newspapers’ reporting has provoked strong reactions on social media from a range of commenters, some arguing in support of the president and some debating the way the situation adds to ongoing discussion about sexual abuse. Still others have been critical of Collado’s past actions. Collado continues to be bothered by the fact that someone anonymously sent details about the case to student newspapers. She feels targeted, she said. But she still thinks she can lead the college. Some of her closest colleagues in higher ed leadership have penned letters in support of her. Nancy Cantor, the chancellor at Rutgers University Newark, wrote that Collado shared facts about her early career when she was executive vice chancellor and chief operating officer at Rutgers, the position she held before coming to Ithaca. “Shirley remains a treasured colleague of profound integrity and compassion, admired by those who have had the privilege to work closely with her,” Cantor wrote. “We have every confidence in her and consider the Ithaca College community very fortunate to have her as its leader.” Collado wanted to come to Ithaca and treat it as a place where she could lead and be herself, she said. She wants to draw strength from her past. “Yes, many of us have narratives that are complicated and hard and challenging,” she said. “This was an experience, like college, that was formative for me. And it’s an experience I wish on no one.” Collado came to Ithaca after the college’s former president, Tom Rochon, decided to leave following intense criticism of his handling of racial incidents on campus. Collado has also been executive vice president of the Posse Foundation. |
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| abb | Jan 18 2018, 04:46 AM Post #2 |
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https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/01/18/ncaa-think-tank-will-mull-associationwide-rule-athletes-ties-sexual-assault Possible Rules for Athletes With History of Sexual Violence An NCAA think tank will discuss the possibility of an associationwide policy on athletes who have committed sexual assault. By Jeremy Bauer-Wolf January 18, 2018 INDIANAPOLIS -- As the country continues to be roiled by continued revelations of sexual assaults perpetrated (mostly) by powerful men, the National Collegiate Athletic Association will take initial steps toward considering a blanket rule on athletes with a history of such acts. While individual colleges and an NCAA conference have created policies barring athletes who have been tied to sexual violence, so far the association has resisted adopting a broader decree. At the NCAA’s annual convention Wednesday, a member of its Commission to Combat Campus Sexual Violence, Cindy Aron, told a crowd that select commission members would meet in Washington next week. They will discuss, she said, a prospective associationwide policy on athletes with a history of sexual assault. Nothing concrete has yet been developed. This “think tank” will also involve higher education experts from across the country who work on sexual violence initiatives on campuses, Aron said. Aron is not an NCAA representative but rather a social worker by trade. She said in an interview that the group wants to discuss next week how institutions can open communication between athletics departments and other college departments. “Universities and athletics departments in particular tend to be siloed off,” Aron said. “So how can we work together to use resources that are already there and then build upon it with one another?” Asked to confirm the topic of next week's meeting and the possible development of an associationwide policy, NCAA officials did not provide a response in time for publication. Advocates for survivors of sexual assault applauded Indiana University at Bloomington last year for its new policy that suspends athletes, both first-year students and transfers, who have a history of sexual violence. Critics of the policy said it was discriminatory and disadvantaged the university. Per the policy, Indiana students who have either been found guilty criminally or pleaded no contest to a felony sex crime, such as rape or domestic violence, are disqualified from participating in intercollegiate athletics-related financial aid, practice or competition. If an athlete is accused of rape or a similar offense, then a university panel meets to decide whether to suspend the athlete from play -- but the athlete might not necessarily be removed from campus. “You have to have these conversations,” Mattie White, senior associate athletic director for academic services at Indiana, said during a convention session on athletes’ health. “And they’re hard, right? When you’re recruiting someone, it’s not the first conversation you’ll have -- ‘have you done something really terrible and bad?’ But we want to make sure we are looking at their digital footprint, trying to figure out who these individuals are before we bring them to our campus.” Colleges aren’t required to track sexual assault convictions or cases at other campuses. The NCAA hasn’t given any direction on this issue, either. Indiana’s policy was inspired by a narrower Southeastern Conference rule that bans only transfer students with a record of sexual assault. SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey told Inside Higher Ed that a group of athletics directors, college presidents and other administrators discussed expanding the prohibition, but so far the conference is satisfied with the policy approved in 2015. Sankey said at the time that first-year students sometimes have offenses that are “shielded” because they were minors. On the NCAA leadership's part, the Board of Governors adopted a new policy last year on campus sexual violence saying athletics departments should know about campus policies on sexual assault and when a student is accused or found guilty of sexual violence. Colleges' sexual assault processes and contact information for an institution’s Title IX coordinator (named for the federal anti-gender-discrimination law Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972) should be provided to athletes, the policy states. Coaches, athletes and sports administrators should receive prevention training, according to the policy. The NCAA also publicizes a tool kit for mitigating sexual violence. At Grinnell College, an Iowa institution that competes in the NCAA's Division III, administrators encourage buy-in from students on sexual assault prevention campaigns, Jen Jacobsen, assistant dean of students and director of wellness and prevention, said during the health session. Jacobsen said the college seeks out students with “social capital” on campus. And when recruits visit campus, some current athletes are encouraged to tell their coaches if they see those visitors doing “creepy things” or being “predatory.” Often the athletes will observe behavior the coaches don’t, Jacobsen said. “They know they can tell their coach, ‘This is not someone I want as part of our team,’” she said. “And our coach stops recruiting them. No matter how talented they are athletically. That’s a values piece that’s about student engagement.” A Grinnell football player, Carson Dunn, told the audience at the convention that he leads sexual violence prevention initiatives among students -- to great success. Grinnell has developed multiple groups, including Student Athletes Leading Change and Student Athlete Mentors, to fight the current culture, Dunn said. On one particular night, he said, another group of students marched around campus to talk about campus sexual assault and challenge students. “We want you to step up and change something about your life to help this fight,” he said. “Whether it’s educating yourself on the topic, or … it’s when that person makes that uncomfortable rape joke, you step in and you stop that. It’s small things that really help change.” |
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| abb | Jan 18 2018, 04:55 AM Post #3 |
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https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/01/how-colleges-foretold-the-metoo-movement/550613/ How Colleges Foretold the #MeToo Movement Lena Felton 1/17/18 Since the fall, the staggering cascade of sexual-misconduct allegations waged against powerful men—from Hollywood moguls to prominent politicians—has mostly centered on the workplace. But as the nation fixated on the downfalls of Harvey Weinstein, John Conyers, and countless others, what has come to be known as the #MeToo movement has been reverberating on college campuses across the country, too. Students flooded social-media feeds with their own stories; university leaders condemned sexual harassment in emails and announcements. Amelia Goldberg, a junior at Harvard College and member of the student-run anti-sexual-violence group Our Harvard Can Do Better, described the experience on campus to me as a “collective airing of trauma.” The Harvard Crimson last month reported that the institution has seen a 20 percent increase in sexual-harassment complaints since the allegations against Weinstein surfaced in October. Bill McCants, who oversees the office charged with handling claims of harassment at Harvard, attributed that rise at least in part to the #MeToo movement, citing conversations he had with students. Other schools’ Title IX officers, who are tasked with ensuring that colleges are in compliance with the federal law that’s used to address sexual harassment, alluded to similar trends on their respective campuses. The officers, who often field sexual-harassment complaints, told me anecdotally that they’ve seen more students come forward with stories of assault in the post-Weinstein era than they did in the past. Comprehensive empirical data on recent sexual-harassment reporting rates aren’t yet available because the institutions generally don’t collect and analyze that information until the end of each school year. This apparent trend is noteworthy. But for Title IX officers and students, the perceived uptick only reaffirms what they already knew about sexual assault; higher-education institutions have for years been aware that such harassment occurs at high rates on their campuses. In a 2015 Association of American Universities survey on sexual assault and misconduct, just over 23 percent of undergraduate female respondents reported having experienced sexual assault or misconduct while in college. It’s difficult to say how accurately the AAU’s findings reflect reality—the survey relied on voluntary responses from 150,000 students across 27 universities—but they do offer a previously nonexistent window into a very real problem. “Because of those types of surveys, we had a real gauge of how serious these problems are in a way that I’m not sure the country was necessarily grappling with to the same degree,” said Meredith Smith, a Title IX officer at Tulane University. “For us [on college campuses], the #MeToo movement happened a few years ago, and it’s like the country is catching up to us.” Amid growing awareness about those problems and a push from the Obama administration to make combating sexual harassment and violence a priority, colleges became much more deliberate about addressing the issue; they expanded their Title IX offices, started conducting their own campus-climate surveys, and launched outreach campaigns. The institutions in turn began to see a steady rise in reporting rates, even though the difficulty of accurately tracking and quantifying the problem’s prevalence renders published data controversial. The current Education Department is now working to overhaul those policies, and it’s not yet clear what the landscape will look like once deliberations are over. Just as uncertain, meanwhile, are the lasting institutional consequences of #MeToo. With the myriad complexities surrounding sexual assault—and the vexed arguments over aspects ranging from the definition of consent to the role of alcohol—the next chapters for both Title IX and #MeToo activism will inevitably be convoluted and thorny. Regardless, what the movements have laid bare, first at colleges and now in the workplace, is an underlying desire to reshape culture itself. * * * When President Barack Obama took office in 2008, he quickly moved to address the issue of sexual harassment at colleges. Administrations had long been accused of mishandling students’ claims; students themselves often had divergent perceptions of certain behaviors, too. A 2015 survey conducted jointly by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that college men and women largely disagreed about sexual consent—that “men sometimes see a green light when women are signaling yellow or red.” According to the 2015 AAU survey, the most common reason students opted not to report an event was that they did not consider the interaction “serious enough.” Yet “there were some really serious things happening to people,” Teresa Wroe, a deputy Title IX officer at University of Colorado, Boulder, told me. “People were saying, ‘I just thought this was something that I had to personally deal with.’” More than 50 percent of respondents who said they were victims of forced penetration didn’t consider the encounter serious enough to report. Some very serious cases of campus sexual assault came into the national spotlight, but less clear-cut episodes were playing out in dorm rooms at the same time—scenarios not unlike those that people have recalled on social media using #MeToo. A boozy holiday office party; a sweaty frat one. A respected boss; a popular varsity athlete. Sloppy kisses and presumptuous grabs, often amid a drunken haze. In both contexts, the stories revealed the extent to which power imbalances can dictate certain interactions. Alleged victims shared their stories as part of a larger aim to change this cultural framework. It was indeed “culture” that the Obama administration said it wanted to reform on campuses several years ago. The Office of Civil Rights in 2011 issued what eventually became known as the “Dear Colleague” letter, which expanded colleges’ oversight in sexual-assault cases and deemed “any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature,” including remarks, worthy of punishment. Sexual harassment could interfere with people’s access to education, the OCR argued, and schools should be responsible for creating a culture in which such behavior is unacceptable in the first place. Support for the new guidelines “was a national moment of students rising up to say enough was enough, that we wouldn’t tolerate harassment and violence and institutional indifference anymore, and that we demanded safe and equitable campuses,” said Sejal Singh, a Harvard Law student who works with the national advocacy group Know Your IX. Title IX officers and advocates commended those policies as initiating a process of much-needed reform. For the past three years, the number of reported cases on campuses across the country has steadily increased; the number of complaints at Harvard rose by 65 percent between 2013-14 and 2016-17 school years, according to official data. Similar to the Obama-era Title IX protocols, #MeToo has provided a platform for women to come forward: People are speaking out about all manners of, in the words of the Dear Colleague letter, “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature” that have affected their ability to do work. Just as the Obama administration had aimed to fundamentally change campus culture by broadening what was punishable, the #MeToo movement has become an opportunity to redefine what’s acceptable when it comes to workplace conduct. The actress Emma Thompson, in an October 2017 interview with BBC Newsnight, said that in her mother’s time, harassment was likened to “pestering”; women’s tolerance for certain behaviors, from lewd jokes to shoulder rubs, is now shifting. Moreover, alleged perpetrators of those actions are being punished outside of the traditional criminal-justice system (by losing their jobs, for example)—much in the same way that schools can suspend or expel students found guilty of harassment by campus courts. But when murky definitions begin to carry legitimate consequences, they’re bound to spark debate. That’s exactly what has been transpiring on campuses since Obama issued the new guidelines. My colleague Emily Yoffe, along with many others, has argued that the “Dear Colleague” letter inspired an exaggerated definition of sexual assault, constituted institutional overreach, and encouraged bias against those accused. Under the Trump administration, those arguments have been gaining serious momentum. After meeting with both survivors’ groups and “men’s rights” organizations last July to assess existing policies, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced that the administration would revoke the Obama administration’s “Dear Colleague” guidelines. DeVos’s new interim guidelines allow schools to use a higher burden of proof for harassment cases if they so choose*, which in turn strengthens protections for those accused of sexual assault. “Any perceived offense can become a full-blown Title IX investigation,” she said in a September speech at George Mason University ahead of the formal announcement. “But if everything is harassment, then nothing is.” Related Story When Will the ‘Harvey Effect’ Reach Academia? Here, once again, the Title IX saga might serve as a blueprint for #MeToo. France, for example, is already seeing significant backlash (and backlash to the backlash) to the #MeToo movement playing out there; Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg has warned of the activism’s potential downsides; a legion of people jumped to the actor and filmmaker Aziz Ansari’s defense after a woman recently published her account of a date-turned-wrong with him. In a December 2017 piece for Politico, Yoffe described how former Senator Al Franken’s downfall after being accused in November of groping and forcibly kissing women was reflective of the changes that had occurred on campuses years before. His exit from the Senate, she wrote, illustrated the same “erasing of distinctions between the criminal and the loutish” that Title IX incurred. The Harvard Law professor Jeannie Suk recently argued in The New Yorker how Title VII, the workplace anti-discrimination law, could carry similar implications. “We can learn a lot from the campus experience, but we’re probably going to see repetition of some of the same errors in addressing such a serious and complex set of problems,” Suk wrote in an email. In other words, there’s no straightforward trajectory for the Title IX and #MeToo movements. But the parallels between the two have exposed the need for some sort of collective change—some sort of redefinition of standards, some sort of reshaping of policies, some sort of reassessment of culture. And for Goldberg, the Our Harvard Can Do Better member, that’s why it’s important not to place #MeToo in a vacuum: “This didn’t happen out of the blue.” * This article originally stated that DeVos’s new interim guidelines require that colleges use a higher burden of proof for harassment cases. We regret the error. |
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| durhamite | Jan 18 2018, 05:45 AM Post #4 |
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So, let me get this straight. Her former coworkers believed it happened. She took a plea deal. She moved a former patient into her home, which never happens, ever. But, she claims that she did not have an inappropriate or sexual relationship with her?!?! Not that I support AL Frankin, but he is no longer a senator because of a similar situation. I am seeing a double standard here. Seems like they want her to succeed because she is from the DR and was part of the posse program. Maybe validation for immigration programs or for certain types of other social programs are more important. But, maybe the past is the past. But, I still question the hire. She seemingly took advantage of a vulnerable person under her charge, so they put her in charge of a whole campus of vulnerable kids??? Just my 2 cents... |
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| abb | Jan 18 2018, 02:40 PM Post #5 |
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https://reason.com/blog/2018/01/18/a-false-accusation-and-an-unfair-investi A False Accusation and Unfair Investigation Derailed This Student Athlete's Life Alphonso Baity transferred to a new college, but he can't play basketball unless the NCAA grants him a waiver. Robby Soave|Jan. 18, 2018 2:30 pm Alphonso BaityDuquesne University / FacebookIn 2014, a white female student at the University of Findlay accused two black athletes of sexually assaulting her. The university expelled the two men—a basketball player and a football player—24 hours later, without bothering to interview witnesses who would have contradicted the accusation. According to the two men's lawsuit against Findlay, investigators didn't even interview the young woman. In my original write-up of the lawsuit, I called it perhaps the most blatantly unfair Title IX case I had ever covered. (Title IX is the federal statute prohibiting sex-based discrimination in education.) That dispute is still working its way through the courts. In the meantime, one of the young men—Alphonso Baity, now 23—was finally able to find a basketball program that would let him on the team: Duquesne University. That was quite an accomplishment; students expelled for sexual misconduct can have a tough time earning admission to another school, no matter how farcical the charges against them. But Baity recently got some bad news. The National College Athletic Association won't let him play. "This young man is being punished again," says Don Maurice Jackson, Baity's attorney. "Not by Duquesne, because Duquesne actually wants the young man on the floor. They want him on the floor. He's been victimized by the NCAA." The issue is the "five-year clock" rule. Student-athletes have a maximum of five years in which they can play a sport for four seasons. Once a student is enrolled in any academic institution, the clock starts ticking, even if the student ends up transferring or missing years of school. Baity's case seems exceptional. But when Duqesne requested a waiver so that Baity could play, the NCAA denied it. A refresher on the initial dispute might be useful. In September of 2014, Baity and Jordan Brown—both juniors at Findlay—shared a bedroom in a five-room house in Findlay, Ohio. They had become friends with another student, a white woman known as "M.K." in the lawsuit. M.K. was well-known to the people who lived in the house, and had a sexual relationship with "Q.J.," another basketball player who resided there. On the Saturday night in question, a group of people—including Brown, M.K., other men, and other women—returned to the house after a party. M.K. and Brown retired to the bedroom, where they had sex. A number of people saw them go in together and heard them having sex. They also heard M.K. loudly consenting to sex, even using the word "yes," according to the lawsuit. Baity returned to the house, waited until he heard a lull, and entered the bedroom to retrieve his phone charger. M.K. invited him to stay and began performing oral sex on him while Brown remained in the room. Once again, M.K. was a willing participant—the initiator, in fact. And once again, people outside the room—including two other women—could hear that consent was given, according to the lawsuit. M.K. also gave no signs that she regretted the encounters the morning after. She remained on good terms with the men of the house. She spoke of the encounters positively—even "boastfully." But 10 days later, she had a change of heart, possibly because she felt slut-shamed. And so she filed a complaint. Again, these details come from a lawsuit designed to portray Baity and Brown in a maximally positive light. But it's clearly true that there were several individuals in that house at that time who might have supported their version of the story. Findlay investigators specifically avoided talking to many of them, reasoning that other black men would stick up for Baity and Brown. Investigators presumed two of the white women who were present that night would agree with M.K.'s account, but these witnesses instead gave the university "information and statements corroborating Plaintiffs' version of events," according to the lawsuit. AlphonsoAlphonso Baity / FacebookIt didn't matter. Findlay expelled Baity and Brown after an investigation that lasted no longer than a day. (Title IX investigation usually last weeks, sometimes months.) Three days later, Findlay sent an email to the entire campus that mentioned Brown and Baity by name and said they had been expelled for sexual assault. "H.S.," a white female student whom M.K. had told about the sexual encounters, reportedly became sick to her stomach when she read the email, because she knew M.K.'s accusation was false. "The Findlay case was one of the more severe deprivations of due process that I've ever seen," Jackson says. In the years since his expulsion, Baity tried repeatedly to enroll in another college where he could play basketball. Several were interested, but they simply couldn't take someone who had been found responsible for sexual misconduct. It's a difficulty that calls to mind the experience of Grant Neal, who was expelled from Colorado State University-Pueblo after a botched Title IX investigation. (Neal's alleged victim never filed a complaint, and even told the university "I wasn't raped.") When I spoke with Neal last year, he told me college after college had denied his request to transfer. Baity eventually met Keith Dambrot, who at the time was head basketball coach at the University of Akron. Dambrot "did background research on the investigation at Findlay and decided to give him an opportunity to join his program," Jackson says. After Dambrot left Akron to take the head coaching job at Duqesne, Baity applied and was accepted into the college. But he can't actually play unless the NCAA reverses its decision. "We're attempting to provide new information to the NCAA staff to get his eligibility back," Jackson tells me. The NCAA did not respond to a request for comment. Baity's ongoing ordeal should serve as a powerful reminder of why due process protections are so important. False accusations really do have the power to derail lives and end promising careers. |
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