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Blog and Media Roundup - Tuesday, February 13, 2018; News Roundup
Topic Started: Feb 13 2018, 06:01 AM (127 Views)
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http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2018/02/12/nassar-michigan-state-university-donations/110331886/

MSU donations drop 25%; Nassar effect uncertain
Neal Rubin, The Detroit News Published 12:00 a.m. ET Feb. 12, 2018 | Updated 10:08 a.m. ET Feb. 12, 2018

Fundraising at Michigan State University took a 25 percent hit in the second half of 2017, a period in which the bad news surrounding Larry Nassar grew increasingly worse.

Across that span, the former MSU doctor pleaded guilty to child pornography charges and criminal sexual misconduct, drew a 60-year sentence in the pornography case and was publicly accused of sexual abuse by three former Olympic gymnasts — and as his toxic story splashed across the front pages, donations fell to $104.2 million from $138.8 million in the same period the year before.

But there are potential silver linings in what seems like an ominous cloud. Experts in collegiate fundraising say that any backlash should reach its expiration date by the start of the 2019 school year, and that the fall of Nassar and the fall-off in gifts are not necessarily related.

In comparison to MSU, donations to the University of Michigan dropped by only 0.86 percent in the last two quarters of 2017, while another large Big Ten institution showed an increase of 23 percent.

That school was Penn State, where former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was sentenced to 30 to 60 years in prison in 2012 for sexually assaulting boys, and three administrators were ultimately jailed for covering up Sandusky’s crimes.

Penn State’s rebound could be an encouraging sign for MSU, and its response to a wrenching scandal could also be a template as the university goes forward without a president who resigned, without an athletic director who retired, and without knowing how deeply its finances and reputation will be damaged by NCAA penalties and the potential lawsuits from more than 250 of Nassar’s victims.

RELATED REPORT: In their own words: Nassar impact statements

“Will Michigan State take a hit in the short term? Absolutely,” said Kristen DeVries, vice president for university advancement at Lawrence Tech University. “If they continue bungling, it could be a much longer term.”

If, however, “they can get back to what has made Michigan State so attractive to academics, students and parents,” any fundraising slump should be over in 18 months. “That,” DeVries said, “is exactly what happened at Penn State.”

Richard Bundy, a former MSU staffer who’s now the vice president for development and alumni relations at Penn State, said the most important thing fundraisers did as the Sandusky issue reverberated was to “spend time listening to their donors.”

The university had its most successful fundraising year immediately before Sandusky’s arrest in 2011. Its second- and third-best years have come since his conviction.

“The institution is going through a painful time right now, but so are its alumni,” said Bundy of MSU, where he spent 1997-2000 with the Eli Broad College of Business. “To an extent, development and alumni relations professionals can help their alumni understand what happened, in an open and non-judgmental way. That’s a really important consideration for them.”

MSU declined to comment on Nassar’s potential impact on fundraising. “Right now,” said spokesman Kent Cassella, “we have one focus: supporting the courageous survivors of Larry Nassar’s horrific abuse and providing them with the help they deserve.”

LATEST COVERAGE: Larry Nassar scandal roils MSU

A sampling of recent MSU donors, with gifts ranging from three figures to eight, may have been telling in that they affixed their outrage to Nassar rather than his employer.

Computer scientist John Koza of Los Altos, California, gave $2 million to the MSU engineering school in 2014 and followed it with a $10.7 million bequest in 2016 to a program called the BEACON Center. A UM alumnus four times over who also supports engineering programs at his alma mater, Koza, 74, was a pioneer in genetic programming and co-founded a company whose computer systems operate state lotteries.

“My future plans have nothing to do with this Nassar,” he said. “The university has tens of thousands of people. It’s inevitable that some of them are bad apples.”

James MacKay of Birmingham and MSU’s Class of 1990 wears his allegiance on his bumper: His license tag features a Spartan helmet and the message, B1GGRN.

He was initially so outraged by Nassar and what appear to be his enablers that “I thought about getting rid of my plate,” he said. But after an ESPN report seemed to connect tenuous dots from Nassar to MSU’s football and basketball programs, “I circled back around” to being angry at the doctor more than the school that employed him.

It’s treacherous ground, conceded MacKay, 50, a marketing director. He doesn’t want to be seen as defending Nassar, whom he loathes. But he loves MSU, he treasures his Spartan memorabilia, and yes, he’ll still send occasional checks.

“You’re not going to find everybody just turning the spigot off,” said Arthur Criscillis of Alexander Haas, an Atlanta-based fundraising consultancy whose list of past and present clients includes more than 180 schools. “Nothing happened that’s different in the classrooms. Nothing happened in the research labs. The university is larger than any one person.”

The swiftness of a university’s recovery, he said, depends on “the degree to which the institution takes decisive action, resets its sights, refocuses on its mission, articulates its aspirations and gets about the business of its good work.”

Criscillis worked with the University of Tennessee, he said, during a tumultuous period in which two presidents “found themselves without a job under challenging circumstances, shall we say.”

One resigned in 2003 after accusations of misusing university resources. The next resigned in 2009 after a series of tussles that led to a faculty no confidence vote. Nevertheless, UT completed a successful billion-dollar capital campaign.

MSU hit the mark in its own four-year, $1.5 billion Empower Extraordinary campaign last September, a year early. The campaign, fueled by donations by more than 230,000 people, was extended through the end of 2018 — and is one of the reasons the 25 percent decrease last July through December might not be significant.

“I’d be very leery of putting some sort of cause and effect here” with Nassar, said Alden Briscoe of Brakeley Briscoe, a fundraising consultancy in San Mateo, California.

Capital campaigns tend to front-load large donations, he said, meaning the heaviest hitters might have already swung by late 2017. In an accounting that includes cash gifts, planned gifts, pledges and realized bequests, the date on a large check — June 29, for instance, rather than July 1 — can skew a six-month report.

It’s possible, Briscoe said, that “some potential donors are saying, ‘I don’t want to be connected to this institution where terrible things happened.’ ” But a controversy typically “has an impact for a period of time and then, ultimately, people get over it.”

“What we want most,” said Larry Gaynor, 62, “is closure. We want to know the truth. The quicker we do, the quicker the victims, the alumni and the school can heal.”

At his alma mater, said the CEO of the beauty products company TNG Worldwide, “these are the darkest days by far since 1855, when it was founded.” But having pledged $3 million to the Broad College of Business to establish the Gaynor Entrepreneurship Lab, he and his wife, Teresa, “are not changing any of our plans. We’re going forward.”

Spring graduate Abigail Reed of West Bloomfield Township is featured online in MSU’s annual giving report. She helped direct a $17,000 donation from the Senior Class Council to MSU Safe Place, a support and resource center for survivors of relationship violence and stalking.

Particularly given her interest in Safe Place, the Nassar disaster “changes the way I look at certain individuals within the institution,” said Reed, 23. “But I hope people don’t take it out on the university as a whole because I love it there.”

Agreed, said Jason Vines, 58: “Please focus on the guy who did this.”

Vines has a master’s degree in labor and industrial relations from MSU, and his wife, Betsy, holds a bachelor’s in business travel management. On their front porch in Wilmington, North Carolina, they fly a Spartan flag.

Vines had a long and colorful career in business communications. With Ford, he dealt with the Firestone calamity, in which defective tires were blamed for 271 deaths in the U.S. Later, with Compuware, he helped handle the fallout when the company hired former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

In a crisis, he said, “the guiding principles are simple. No. 1: Take care of your customer. No. 2: Be transparent and honest.”

He said that if MSU needs him, he’ll move to East Lansing for the next six months at no charge to help interim president John Engler and his team navigate the roiling waters.

“I love the university,” he explained, enough to set aside his current career as a consultant and author.

Vines’ first book, a memoir of confronting corporate chaos, was called “What Would Jesus Drive.” The answer is all of four words long, he said, and they are crucial as Michigan State pays the price for Nassar:

“He drove the truth.”

nrubin@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @nealrubin_dn
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https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2018/02/13/student-accused-sexual-assault-wins-big-court


Student Accused of Sexual Assault Wins Big in Court
By Jeremy Bauer-Wolf
February 13, 2018


A U.S. magistrate judge has recommended that a student accused of sexual assault at James Madison University be awarded nearly $850,000 after he successfully sued the institution.

The student, called John Doe in court filings, sued the university in 2015 after he was found responsible for sexual assault.

A university panel initially considered him not responsible, but his accuser, called Jane Doe in court documents, appealed that decision -- John Doe was then suspended until the spring 2020 semester and barred from campus.

John Doe filed a lawsuit, alleging his 14th Amendment due process rights had been violated. A federal district court judge ruled in his favor last year, ordering that James Madison reinstate him.

The magistrate judge has recommended the court give John Doe a total of $849,231 -- roughly $795,691 in attorney’s fees and about $53,539 in litigation costs -- a surprisingly large payment.

The court’s ruling follows a trend of an increasing number of male students accused of sexual assault who have pursued court action against colleges and won.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2018/02/12/where-was-the-board-at-michigan-state/?utm_term=.33195e748fb4

Where was the board at Michigan State?
By Richard D. Legon February 12 at 6:20 PM


Like many of you, I’ve been tracking the still unfolding story of sexual abuse on the campus of Michigan State University. While the resignation of the president in such difficult and tragic situations often marks the end of scandal and the start of rebuilding, I am afraid the fallout from this story may be far from over.

For the last several years, higher education has been rightly focused on issues of sexual abuse and harassment on campus, and yet we still see examples of institutional chief executive officers falling into the trap of either protecting their own reputations instead of the long-term standing of their institutions, or assuming they can manage such a high-profile set of issues on their own.

Clearly, leadership of our colleges and universities is an increasingly challenging job — it’s nonstop. However, protection against sexual harassment and assault on our campuses must be Job One. It affects all of society when an institution of higher education fails its students, faculty and others — and the fallout of such failures sits squarely atop the desk of institutional leadership.

The recent resignation of the nationally renowned president of Michigan State is unfortunate, but I believe appropriate under the circumstances of the apparent yearslong awareness of allegations that a sexual predator operated on the MSU campus.

The departure of Baylor University’s president because of sexual scandals in the university’s athletic department, the recent decision by the University of Rochester’s president to leave his post because of the investigation of a faculty member accused of harassment, and the Penn State crisis are just three other high-profile examples.

There are others — too many others — that suggest there are problems needing serious oversight and, often, a wholesale revision of internal policies.

While it may be arguable as to what each of these leaders knew or when each knew it in relation to the issues that resulted in their respective departures, those at the top must own the issues that are central to institutional safety and reputation.

Students may return, athletics programs may be restored, but the bad taste such events put in the mouths of the public contribute to the current decline in the public’s trust in higher education.

Is it any wonder that some ask if universities are worth the cost?

In the end, aren’t all of these issues ultimately tied to a failure in governance?

In the case of Michigan State, the publicly elected board members stood in support of the president until two members changed their positions and urged the president to leave.

Did the board members’ decision to discontinue their support represent personal reconsideration, or some form of external political pressure? We will probably not know. But their action shows that the issues that fall to a governing board must include the difficult and uncomfortable.

A governing board is ultimately accountable for meeting a public trust — beginning with publicly demonstrating concern for the survivors of sexual assault. The duty of care demands more than lip service for those who were abused, assaulted or attacked.

Boards must also be able to assure an uncertain public that board members recognize their accountability.

People need to hear from those charged with the ultimate authority that they understand when an institution’s credibility comes under question and that they will lead the effort to make things right.

Supporting a comprehensive investigation can demonstrate board accountability, as will a comprehensive audit of institution policies.

Boards must assert their leadership on issues that matter, and these issues matter.

While governing boards should be supportive of presidential leadership, they must also make clear their expectations of chief executive officers for transparency and trust on all issues, particularly those issues that relate to student safety, especially instances of sexual assault or harassment.

Chairs of governing boards should establish a sufficiently open relationship with institution chief executives to ensure that boards aren’t surprised by difficult issues.

Too many boards address only those issues that are placed in front of them by institutional administrators. Boards are appropriately dependent on chief executives and senior administrators to shape meeting agendas and frame strategic challenges and opportunities. But when do boards step up and make clear that, under their broad standards of accountability, it sometimes falls to them to identify what to discuss and what to decide?

Sometimes, it’s the issues that are out there but not spoken of that should be central to governing board conversation.

[After the Nassar sentencing, a quiet reckoning at Michigan State]

Grade Point newsletter

News and issues affecting higher education.

Of course, boards of public colleges and universities are somewhat constrained by state requirements of open meetings. But rather than using that as an excuse, let’s find alternative formats that will enable all boards to address the issues that really matter.

Board leadership has been debated for many years and recent comments about board responsibility, including some from my own association, have urged boards to recognize the scope of their accountability.

If high-profile management failures involving sexual assault — such as Michigan State and Baylor — don’t awaken boards to their ultimate responsibility, others may appropriately begin to question the way universities are run.
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http://thefederalist.com/2018/02/13/settlement-fraternity-rolling-stonerape-hoax-saga-officially/#disqus_thread

After Settlement With Fraternity, The Rolling Stone Rape Hoax Saga Is Officially Over
Rolling Stone is only now able to put this travesty behind them, at least legally.

By Ashe Schow
FEBRUARY 13, 2018

More than three years after Rolling Stone published the most significant false accusation of rape since the Duke Lacrosse hoax, the saga is officially over for the magazine.

That’s right, Rolling Stone is only now able to put this travesty behind them — at least legally. The magazine reached a final settlement in late December with the members of the fraternity that were falsely maligned in the story. The details have not been disclosed, but at least two members of the fraternity will be the beneficiary of the settlement. Three fraternity members – George Elias IV, Ross Fowler and Stephen Hadford alleged there was enough information in the article to identify them as some of the potential rapists in the story.

The original story was told by a young woman named Jackie Coakley — identified only as “Jackie” in the article — who said she was taken on a date by a handsome member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity at the University of Virginia, and then led back to the fraternity house where several other members of the fraternity violently gang-raped her on top of a broken glass table.

The three named brothers filed their lawsuit in July 2015, seven months after the article was published. They each claimed they were harassed by family, friends, and coworkers as potential rapists in the months following publication. A year later, a judge dismissed their lawsuit, claiming “the article’s details about the attackers are too vague and remote from the plaintiffs’ circumstances to be ‘of and concerning’ them.”

Bizarrely, U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel in Manhattan, who dismissed the lawsuit, also wrote: “Their defamation claims are directed toward a report about events that simply did not happen.” Yes, Castel, that is how defamation works.

The 2nd Circuit reversed Castel’s decision in September 2017, after Rolling Stone had reached settlements on two other lawsuits brought in the wake of the infamous article. The federal appellate circuit stated readers “could plausibly conclude that many or all fraternity members participated in alleged gang rape as an initiation ritual and all members knowingly turned a blind eye to the brutal crimes.” Rolling Stone and the fraternity members reached a settlement three months later.

The first settlement the magazine had to pay was to former UVA dean Nicole Eramo, who was portrayed as the “chief villain” in the story and as someone who was callous and indifferent to rape accusations from students. She filed a lawsuit in May 2015, and the suit eventually went to trial. During the trial, it was revealed that Rolling Stone removed information that cast Eramo in a favorable light.

Rolling Stone, its publisher Jann Wenner, and the article’s author Sabrina Rubin Erdely, were all found liable for defamation in November 2016. Eramo was awarded $3 million in damages. The two sides settled in April 2017 for an undisclosed amount.

Then in June 2017, the magazine settled with the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity for $1.65 million. The fraternity said it would give “a significant portion” to victims’ advocacy groups.

Those who were wronged by the article have received compensation for their suffering, but only Rolling Stone has been punished for its role in the fake story. Will Dana, who was the managing editor of the magazine at the time the false story was published, left the magazine in 2015, but was not fired. Publisher Jann Wenner agreed to sell his share of the magazine in 2017, meaning he would walk away with millions. Erdely has not written anything since and appears to still be underground. In a strange bit of irony, the last thing she ever tweeted was a reply to ProPublica reporter Pamela Colloff about correcting a tweet to label Erdely as a “journalist,” instead of simply a “woman.”

Shortly after this tweet, the article began to fall apart. She hadn’t even done the most basic journalism, like confirming that the man Coakley went on a date with actually existed (he did not). In fact, Jackie made him up in an elaborate attempt to win the affections of another student.

The magazine itself was punished with a blow to its credibility and the settlements. But, just as in the Duke Lacrosse case, many of the people who enabled the false accusation and unfairly deemed the fraternity as guilty from the start were unharmed by the article. UVA President Teresa Sullivan still has her job, even though she prematurely punished the entire Greek system at the university in the wake of the article.

Sullivan extended a voluntary ban on social activities for months after the article was punished, and required organizations to sign new agreements in order to resume such activities. She never apologized for her behavior and rush to judgement.

And Coakley, the woman who made up the story that led to tarnished reputations of her alma mater and an innocent fraternity, never saw any sort of punishment except for lies being debunked in the national media. UVA never punished her for lying, and she faced no legal consequences.

Clearly, Coakley was an emotionally disturbed individual, and many shy away from taking on someone like that even if they did hurt other people (even though we could claim that anyone who commits a heinous crime is also disturbed). At the same time, she was enabled by adults who should have known better, but instead enabled her, apparently because they couldn’t believe someone would lie about something so horrific.


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The settlement money may be nice, but where do the falsely accused young men go to get their reputations back? They will always be a Google search away from the allegations - debunked or not.


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https://pjmedia.com/trending/professors-condemn-victim-centered-title-ix-investigations-open-letter/

Professors Condemn 'Victim-Centered' Title IX Investigations in Open Letter
By Toni Airaksinen February 12, 2018

Nearly 140 professors and legal experts have endorsed an open letter calling for an immediate end to the use of “victim-centered” and “trauma-informed” practices during campus sexual misconduct investigations.

Despite feminist groups praising these practices for encouraging victims to come forward, the open letter warns that the “believe the victim” ethos and the policies it has inspired “undermine neutrality in campus Title IX disciplinary processes.”

Spearheaded by the Maryland-based nonprofit Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE), the letter also argues that, by its very nature, the “believe the victim” ethos presumes the guilt of the accused and erodes due process.

The letter was signed by numerous professors, including Harvard Law School professor Janet Halley, Denver University Law Professor Dave Kopel, and Geoffrey Miller, a professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of New Mexico.

The lack of due process in sexual misconduct cases is a growing concern. Since 2011, more than 200 lawsuits have been filed on behalf of male students who contend they were wrongfully accused, according to Title IX for All.

The specifics of each lawsuit vary. But one recurring sentiment is clear: if only the student was afforded all elements of a fair trial -- such as the ability to present exculpatory evidence, or the right to cross-examine an accuser -- the truth would have prevailed.

But instead, the ongoing erosion of due process “is disturbingly reminiscent of the 1980s and '90s satanic daycare child abuse ‘witch hunt’ ... during which investigators were instructed to ‘believe the children’ without scrutiny,” the open letter adds.

In an interview with PJ Media, University of Southern California (USC) professor James Moore said he initially learned about Title IX investigations while he served as one of the vice deans for the USC School of Engineering.

From 2011 to 2017, concerned parents increasingly phoned him, asking if USC would ever consider accepting students who had been forced out of their previous school due to a sexual misconduct allegation.

“The parent was always looking for a way forward for his or her child,” Moore said.

Unfortunately, Moore’s hands were tied. But the calls from parents did spark his interest in learning more about Title IX and the 2011 "Dear Colleague" Letter. Issued by the U.S. Office for Civil Rights, the Obama-era letter mandated that colleges use a 50.01 percent “preponderance of the evidence” standard during sexual misconduct investigations.

Moore says the policy was “well-intentioned but wrong-headed.” Though the policy was rescinded by Education Secretary DeVos last September, some critics warn that the bureaucratic regime the policy necessitated may take years to undo.

Accused students face a biased system of investigating complaints and conducting trials, argues Moore. “It is a witch’s brew of unfairness to the accused, and this is what motivated me to sign the letter condemning victim-centered investigations,” he told PJ Media.
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“Run over by a really bad process,” Duke soccer player has his day in court

By Ray Gronberg
rgronberg@heraldsun.com

February 13, 2018 06:00 AM

DURHAM

Duke University broke its word to a men’s soccer player when it mishandled the disciplinary process it put him through after a fellow student accused him of sexual misconduct, Durham’s top judge agrees.

Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson acted on that conclusion Monday by turning a temporary injunction into a permanent one that bars Duke from imposing a six-semester suspension that soccer player Ciaran McKenna otherwise faced.

Hudson’s ruling effectively decided McKenna’s breach-of-contract lawsuit against Duke ahead of trial, leaving the two sides little more to do but argue about the damages Duke eventually might have to pay him.

He’ll be seeking more than just attorneys’ fees, as the question ultimately revolves around “what effect does it have to be falsely labeled as a rapist and how much does it cost you in life,” said Emilia Beskind, one of McKenna’s lawyers.

But Beskind noted that Duke can appeal Hudson’s ruling to the N.C. Court of Appeals.

McKenna is contesting a ruling from Duke’s in-house disciplinary process that found him responsible for alleged sexual misconduct that happened in 2015.

The known facts of the incident are, at this point, legally secondary to the questions about how Duke handled the disciplinary process. McKenna and the woman involved met at a Durham nightspot, went back to their dorm, and engaged in sexual activity that included intercourse.

By all accounts, everything up to the intercourse was consensual. The case went through the campus hearing process twice, the first panel saying that McKenna in going ahead had “relied on [the woman’s] failure to object” and the second saying he “should have sought additional confirmation” after she told him she was a virgin.

Procedural error

What put the case in court was McKenna’s belief – encouraged by Duke law professor James Coleman, his adviser during the disciplinary process – that there shouldn’t have been a second campus hearing at all. It happened after a campus appeals panel ruled that a procedural error had marred the first.

Duke policy in 2015-16 said the appeals panel should “resolve the case” after discovering such an error, except when it sees the need for more witness testimony. Instead, in the McKenna case it sent the matter back to the Office of Student Conduct, which called for an all-new hearing.

Because of a quirk of North Carolina law, a private university like Duke isn’t normally vulnerable to breach-of-contract challenges to its student-disciplinary process. But McKenna’s lawyers – Beskind and Jay Ferguson – relied on the terms of the letter-of-intent and financial-aid agreement he signed during his recruitment by Duke’s soccer team.

The aid deal specifies that Duke was free to cancel his scholarship if he engaged “in misconduct warranting substantial disciplinary penalty as determined by Duke’s regular student disciplinary authority.”

Published procedures

McKenna’s lawyers argued that wording obliged Duke to follow its published procedures for handling the case. But Duke’s lawyer, Paul Sun, said it only implied that the Office of Student Conduct – the relevant “authority” – would handle a complaint but left university officials free to decide how.

Sun added that the contract didn’t include the Duke Community Standard in Practice, the document that spells out the disciplinary process. In successful contract-law claims “where there’s an incorporation of rules and procedures from another document, it specifically refers to those procedures,” he said. “That’s what’s missing here.”

But Ferguson had already noted that one of the normal rules lawyers and judges use in reading contracts is that any ambiguity should count against the person or organization that wrote it. Duke controlled the wording of its deal with McKenna.

And anyway, “there’s no ambiguity in the term ‘resolve the case,’” Ferguson said.

He added that one Duke official, Janie Long, now the associate vice provost for undergraduate education and a former chairwoman of the student-discipline appeals board, is on record as telling a student in 2015-16 that an appeals board “will make the final decision” in cases where there’s no need for more testimony.

Duke officials “didn’t want this court to see” that email, Ferguson said, telling Hudson that the university handed it over late in the trial-preparation process after McKenna’s lawyers asked them to confirm its authenticity or see Long called as a witness.

Hudson said little about the reasoning for his decision other than that he agreed with McKenna’s arguments. He left it to Ferguson and Beskind to draft an order for him to sign that would figure in any Duke appeal of his ruling. The judge a year ago issued a temporary injunction that kept McKenna in school in 2017 and so far in 2018.

Beskind, a Duke School of Law graduate, said afterward that the ruling “feels special” because of the nature of the case.

From the start, “I felt really strongly that this kid just got run over by a really bad process and is entirely innocent,” she said.

Ray Gronberg: 919-419-6648, @rcgronberg

Read more here: http://www.heraldsun.com/news/local/counties/durham-county/article199782844.html#storylink=cpy
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http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2018/02/judge-sides-with-mckenna-in-lawsuit-against-duke-releases-him-permanently-from-suspension


Judge sides with junior Ciaran McKenna in sexual assault lawsuit against Duke
By Staff Reports | 02/13/2018

Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson permanently barred Duke from suspending junior Ciaran McKenna over sexual misconduct claims, The Herald Sun reported Tuesday.

McKenna sued Duke last year, alleging that the University mishandled rape allegations against him in the student conduct process.

Hudson had previously issued a temporary injunction, but now converted it into a permanent injunction against the University. Emilia Beskind, one of McKenna’s lawyers, told The Chronicle that the permanent injunction was based off only one of the several legal claims McKenna filed against the University.

However, she said Duke could not suspend McKenna even if the other claims went the other way because of the permanent injunction.

"The summary judgement motion was about the contract claim, that Duke has a contract with their students and in particular with this student, and that they violated that contract," she said. "The permanent injunction is based on the court's finding on that claim."

Beskind said in the Herald Sun that McKenna would pursue damages due to the effect being “falsely labeled as a rapist” could have on his life. However, she also noted that Duke has the option of appealing the injunction.

Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations, declined to comment on pending litigation.

In July 2016, a three-person Office of Student Conduct panel found McKenna unanimously responsible for violating sexual misconduct policy because the alleged victim had not verbally consented. However, the panel was not unanimously convinced that the alleged victim said “no” to the sexual encounter—though she claimed that she had.

McKenna appealed the decision, and the appeals panel found that there was procedural error in the first panel. The issue was then returned to the Office of Student Conduct.

Convened in November 2016, a second panel found that the alleged victim had not given consent, and that she had also explicitly denied it. At that point, McKenna appealed to a second appeals panel, which decided not to overturn the decision. McKenna was then suspended in January 2017 and sued for breach-of-contract thereafter.

McKenna claimed Duke breached its own policy by allowing a second hearing panel to hear the case at all, when instead the appeals panel should have “resolved the case” as specified by university procedure at the time.

Check back for updates on this developing story. This article was updated at 10:40 Tuesday morning to include Beskind's comments.
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