8 ms·

For the life of me I don’t understand why government funded institutions run their own tribunals. Send it through the proper court system, if the accused is gui

For the life of me I don’t understand why government funded institutions run their own tribunals. Send it through the proper court system, if the accused is guilty you can expel them cleanly.

Fellshard 7y ago
My guess is that it enables them to spin up their own experimental judicial systems that they believe should exist. To them, relegating to proper courts would be giving up their stake in determining how things 'ought to be'. Consider, for example, the premise of 'rape culture' which was popularized a few years ago. If such a claim concerning culture is to be made, then it implies the judicial systems external to the institution are reinforcing that culture, and the only way to prevent that from being a part of the institution is to override it with your own judicial system. Similar logic could be used regarding other sociological claims made in private institutions that they must reinforce in this way.
- joe_the_user 7y ago
  That ridiculous claims smacks of conspiracy theory. Any number of institutions have their own committees to judge bad behavior - civil courts of all sorts multiply in a bureaucratic society and colleges just one example of a bureaucracy and one strongly connected to many others in this society.
  - Fellshard 7y ago
    This is true that bureaucracy breeds judicial systems. My observation is more related to the /why/ of this particular common case. It does not take a conspiracy theory to observe what is said by those enacting Title IX policies and the ensuing results that follow as a natural consequence.
- rubbingalcohol 7y ago
  Could you elaborate how it follows that the judicial institutions themselves would be reinforcing 'rape culture' in your example? Wouldn't it be more plausible that factors external to the judicial systems might be to blame?
  - Fellshard 7y ago
    The reasoning being, 'if we let the external systems deal with it, they would not judge rightly by our standards.' If they believed it would judge rightly, they would have no reason to institute their own.
    - rubbingalcohol 7y ago
      I don't think that follows. A civil court would not typically rule that a defendant who was found liable by a preponderance of evidence should be expelled from their academic programs. A criminal court less so. These systems are not equipped to handle the specific remedies that an academic disciplinary program should be designed around providing. Zooming out a bit, I don't think the civil/criminal courts failure to be suitable for handling an academic complaint constitutes a reinforcement of rape culture or anything else. That's akin to saying "by not doing something about [some injustice] you're complicit" which is not necessarily true.
      - Fellshard 7y ago
        I believe they would make that claim, again based on their own reasoning.
      - Udik 7y ago
        > A civil court would not typically rule that a defendant ... should be expelled from their academic program True, but nothing prevents an internal committee from simply acquiring the results of the court and applying sanctions on that base. In fact you don't even need an internal committee, you just need a general rule that applies automatically.
jaccarmac 7y ago
Sometimes you want to have people behave in a way which reflects higher ideals than mere legality.
- weberc2 7y ago
  As far as I'm aware, these "tribunals" are dealing with issues like rape and sexual assault, which are actually crimes. As far as I can tell, the generous interpretation for their foundation was that the legal system affords due process rights to the accused. The not very generous interpretation is that some powerful ideologues wanted a mechanism to discriminate against a particular protected demographic.
sneak 7y ago
The problem is that it is reasonable to expel people (and, indeed, to want to expel people) with a much much lower burden of proof than would be required to lock them in a cage. There absolutely should be a different standard for “can continue to be in this school” and “can continue to walk down the public sidewalk”, and also decided by different people.
- mieseratte 7y ago
  Why should they have a lower burden of proof?
  - jayd16 7y ago
    For starters its a civil vs criminal distinction.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      The government is imposing penalties for criminal behavior. Classifying that as "civil" is a farce.
      - throwaway2048 7y ago
        You can be sued in civil court for criminal actions.
        AnthonyMouse 7y ago
        You can be sued in civil court for money. You're not held in prison or kicked out of school by government fiat in the meantime. And the damages (if any) are imposed after the court proceeding. The exceptions are related to things like civil asset forfeiture, which are of questionable constitutionality and are similar to the rules we're discussing insofar as they are both worthy of contempt.
        7y ago
hammock 7y ago
The answer is in the article: Title IX requires them to. Specifically, the new federal guidance that was issued during the Obama administration.
- mieseratte 7y ago
  I understand “why,” in that they are required to. What I don’t understand is why this is a thing to begin with. Government end-runs around standard systems of due process is odd.
  - denkmoon 7y ago
    Keep it contained. Keep it within your control or within the control of your cronies, and then you'll always get the outcome you want. The people pushing this aren't in it for fairness or due process.
  - gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
    You can trace this mentality about government back to the progressive era. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government
  - gedy 7y ago
    From the article: "This ideology is a successor to liberalism. It brandishes terms that superficially resemble normative liberalism—terms like diversity and inclusion—but in fact seeks to supplant it. This new regime, in which administrative power has been fashioned into a blunt instrument of deterrence, marks off a crucial distinction—between the liberal rule of law, and the punitive system of surveillance rooted in identity politics known as 'social justice.'”
    - doodliego 7y ago
      It's neo-Stalinism, the goal and methods are both fundamentally anti-democratic. It's effects are as bad as the McCarthyism and red scares of the mid-20th century.
    - 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
drewrv 7y ago
Ideally that makes sense to me, but unfortunately courts take a long of time and don't always pursue cases thoroughly. Given that reality, I don't know how an institution is supposed to handle the following scenario without their own tribunal system: Student A and Student B have a class together. Their dorms are next door to each other. Student A rapes Student B. Is Student B expected to attend class every day with their rapist? To live next door to them? How could one expect Student B to maintain their academic performance in that sort of environment?
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  Your scenario and the scenario where someone is falsely accused are indistinguishable prior to a court proceeding. In the second case the victim is the person being falsely accused. Then you would have the same problem with the victim being unable to maintain their academic performance if you kick them out of school without due process. Let's even admit that forcing a rape victim to live in the same dorm as their rapist is untenable. So that option is off the table and one of them should leave, but in that case it would be the same burden (of leaving) on each class of victim and the tiebreaker should be innocent until proven guilty. On top of that, it may be possible to live in a different dorm or take different classes while remaining at the same school, which is a lesser burden than an innocent victim being forced out of the entire school.
- klipt 7y ago
  What if Student A and Student B both get drunk and have sex. The next day they both feel they were raped. Which one do you expel? Currently the de facto assumption is whoever files a Title IX report first is the victim and whoever files second is the rapist. I'm sure you can see how this system can be abused: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/title-ix-is-too-easy-to-abuse/561650/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/title-ix-i...
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    This is an easy determination in a case of heterosex: the male is the rapist and the female is the victim. Other cases could be more difficult.
paggle 7y ago
Sometimes an organization needs to act with less power to punish, but also less standard of proof. For example, NFL player Ray Rice was caught on video punching his girlfriend unconscious. The NFL can’t put him in prison, but they did suspend him from the league, because he was a toxic brand even though his girlfriend did not press criminal or civil charges. These universities are government organizations, but also like to think of themselves as independent, so I can see the jam they are in.
- rplst8 7y ago
  It's one thing when there is incontrovertible proof, it's another when it's he said she said.
- wnoise 7y ago
  Many of them are not government organizations. Even the ones that are, are state organizations, not federal. They do all take federal money though...
  - paggle 7y ago
    The Supreme Court has held that most Constitutional protections from the federal government also apply to state governments.
shawndrost 7y ago
I don't want to wade into the specifics of campus tribunals, but the broad mechanism here is very commonplace and uncontroversial, no? Eg if I work for an NSF grant recipient and I spit on my boss, and I get fired with no court ruling, would you find it confusing/objectionable?
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  If firing you was a requirement to maintain the NSF grant? Yes, that would be objectionable, because then it isn't your boss (a private person/organization) but rather the government imposing the penalty without due process.
  - shawndrost 7y ago
    Unless I'm missing something, the principle you find objectionable is generally legal, widespread, and uncontroversial. In point of fact, the NSF requires grantees (and their scientists) to follow many requirements, and imposes penalties upon them without due process. Movie distributors force the same things on Netflix and their employees via partnership contracts. An umbrella organization like Boy Scouts imposes membership conduct requirements on its independent affiliates and their members.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      In this case the government isn't just allowing the school to use judicial procedures the government itself couldn't use without violating due process, it's requiring them to. That's different. And movie distributors and Boy Scouts are not the government. And when a private organization deals unfairly with a private person, due process is still available in the form of a court proceeding (e.g. a suit for unfair termination), but in this case that would either be dismissed (e.g. because the school was following federal requirements) or put the school in an impossible situation where the federal requirements require them to use an unreasonable procedure that subjects them to legal liability by an innocent accused person.
- jhbadger 7y ago
ineedasername 7y ago
Leaving aside the hot-button topic of sexual assault, there are plenty of sub-criminal or borderline actions that can occur that the college needs to deal with. Not all violations of a code of conduct are criminal violations. They'd much rather "sentence" an underage drinker to an alcohol education session than have all such students arrested. A lot of this is mission-driven: Schools honestly believe their role is to turn some of these types of things into a learning experience. Now, you might disagree with this approach to any/all of the above, but this is the reason that answers your question. Source: I work in higher ed technology, at times very closely with some of the disciplinary groups.
- ANPEQ-1 7y ago
  "Learning Experience" vs. "Permanent, intractable and public Scarlet Letter" :|
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    Again, I said leaving aside the controversial issue of sexual assault. For something like illegal drug or alcohol usage, except in very egregious circumstances, the goal is to avoid such a "Scarlet letter" by providing the student an opportunity to deal with the issue without involving law enforcement, e.g., drug/alcohol education programs, counseling or addiction services, and so on.
- tomp 7y ago
  Good point, but underage drinking is a victimless crime. I’d be pretty appalled if I was raped and the only consequence would be that the rapist was expelled...
  - ineedasername 7y ago
    Underage drinking in and of itself may be victimless in some sense, but schools want students to be responsible, and from a liability point of view they can't simply ignore it when they see it happening. But neither do they want to refer all such cases to law enforcement. So therein lies the desire for education programs and addiction counseling when it is indicated. Sexual assault is much more complicated. If the accuser doesn't want to report it to law enforcement and press charges, the maximum penalty the school can inflict is expulsion. Historically this has been a problem in a variety of ways. First, schools have sometimes been accused of discouraging the accuser from going to the police. That problem has resulted in dedicated sexual assault response plans to avoid that sort of thing and work with the accuser to connect them to appropriate resources, counseling, etc. Beyond that, the school is in a bind: prior to either legal action or a school-based disciplinary hearing for violation of the code of conduct, it is punitive to inflict punishment like suspension or force schedule changes to avoid the accused coming into contact with their alleged victim. At the same time, if there was an assault, it can very much exacerbate the harm to the victim to keep things as they are. I don't know of a good solution to this. It often results in the accuser being the one that has to change their schedule or drop out to avoid coming into contact with their alleged attacker. Again, I don't have an answer that both completely protects a victim from further trauma at the same time that it provides the accused with protection from penalty until they are found guilty. Personally, I think it helps the situation when the accuser is willing to go to the police because that opens up other options like a restraining order that can both protect the victim but also provides judicial review before the accused's rights and privileges are abridged. That is still far from ideal in many cases though. No easy answers here.
Lazare 7y ago
If I run a startup, and one of my employees is making other employees uncomfortable, and he keeps getting accused of harassing other employees, and is generally just making some of my best engineers unhappy, hurting productivity, and ruining our carefully constructed culture... ...I can fire him. I mean, obviously I need to go through the proper HR procedures, follow local employment law, respect the terms of his contract, etc., but I have no obligation to keep him employed if I think he's a net negative to my company. Arguably I have an obligation to not keep him employed. And I certainly have no requirement to wait until he has been convicted of a crime; it's not even clear any of the above is a crime. Similarly, if I run a resort, and one of the guests is so unpleasant they're driving away other guests, or if I run a restaurant, and one of the guests is making other guests uncomfortable, or I run an apartment building, and one of the tenants is behaving poorly. A university is a business. People come and pay money in exchange for a service, and if someone is interfering with the ability of other people to receive that service, or making people reluctant to come and pay money, it's perfectly fine for them to be asked to leave. If what they're doing happens to be a crime, then by all means, also report them to the police, but it's kind of odd to suggest that you shouldn't expel students except if they've been convicted of a crime. That being said, I think universities are doing a terrible job here, and I think that given the extreme importance of a university education in modern life, the disruption that being expelled entails, and the stigma that will follow someone if they are expelled, we need to be very careful about the process here. My local dollar store will ban you from the store if they think you shoplifted, and I assume they get it wrong sometimes, but it's fine, because being unjustly banned from a dollar store does not ruin your life. Being unjustly expelled from university could! Things are broken and need fixing. But a world where you can only be expelled on conviction of a crime makes no sense either. The discussion need to be about the correct amount of protection needed.
- ellius 7y ago
  "A university is a business." This is a massive false equivalence. For one thing, most of the "employees" in your metaphor are eighteen to twenty-two years old. Not to mention the fact that students are regularly put through the ringer and expelled on the first accusation. It's hardly akin to the "repeat offense" scenario you outlined in your first example. And comparing being expelled for an alleged sexual assault to being asked to leave a resort for rude behavior? Come on. This is a different situation than anything you described. Universities have much more of a guardian and stewardship role than an employer, and rape is a fucking crime. It should be handled by the mechanism we've created to handle crimes, i.e. criminal courts of law.
scarmig 7y ago
The court system is a very rigid structure. It's costly, and in the USA inherently has components that make it ineffective to addressing rape accusations, particularly the right to cross examine the accuser and how a good defense attorney will use that right. Oftentimes a victim doesn't want to go through that process and is mostly interested in not having to be confronted with their rapist every day. That doesn't mean anything, one way or another, about how well these university tribunals work. It's just pointing out deficiencies in the existing court system. Another way to think of it is balancing false negatives and false positives. The court system, ideally, errs on the side of minimizing false positives, because of how damaging they are for the accused. That inherently means more false negatives, and aspects of the process that are also much more burdensome for victims to navigate. Universities are trying to create an alternative system, where more false positives are accepted and consequences are less severe, and more focused on making sure the victim doesn't have to confront their rapist in day-to-day life than on life-altering consequences for the accused or protecting the public more generally from repeat offenses.
dmckeon 7y ago
Institutions often want their own tribunals so that they can more strongly influence both the outcome of investigations and decisions, and the public messaging about them. The underlying goals are not justice and equity, but protection of and advancement for the institution itself. Consider universities, churches, and HR departments.

For the life of me I don’t understand why government funded institutions run their own tribunals. Send it through the proper court system, if the accused is guilty you can expel them cleanly.

Fellshard 7y ago

My guess is that it enables them to spin up their own experimental judicial systems that they believe should exist. To them, relegating to proper courts would be giving up their stake in determining how things 'ought to be'. Consider, for example, the premise of 'rape culture' which was popularized a few years ago. If such a claim concerning culture is to be made, then it implies the judicial systems external to the institution are reinforcing that culture, and the only way to prevent that from being a part of the institution is to override it with your own judicial system. Similar logic could be used regarding other sociological claims made in private institutions that they must reinforce in this way.

joe_the_user 7y ago
That ridiculous claims smacks of conspiracy theory. Any number of institutions have their own committees to judge bad behavior - civil courts of all sorts multiply in a bureaucratic society and colleges just one example of a bureaucracy and one strongly connected to many others in this society.
- Fellshard 7y ago
  This is true that bureaucracy breeds judicial systems. My observation is more related to the /why/ of this particular common case. It does not take a conspiracy theory to observe what is said by those enacting Title IX policies and the ensuing results that follow as a natural consequence.
rubbingalcohol 7y ago
Could you elaborate how it follows that the judicial institutions themselves would be reinforcing 'rape culture' in your example? Wouldn't it be more plausible that factors external to the judicial systems might be to blame?
- Fellshard 7y ago
  The reasoning being, 'if we let the external systems deal with it, they would not judge rightly by our standards.' If they believed it would judge rightly, they would have no reason to institute their own.
  - rubbingalcohol 7y ago
    I don't think that follows. A civil court would not typically rule that a defendant who was found liable by a preponderance of evidence should be expelled from their academic programs. A criminal court less so. These systems are not equipped to handle the specific remedies that an academic disciplinary program should be designed around providing. Zooming out a bit, I don't think the civil/criminal courts failure to be suitable for handling an academic complaint constitutes a reinforcement of rape culture or anything else. That's akin to saying "by not doing something about [some injustice] you're complicit" which is not necessarily true.
    - Fellshard 7y ago
      I believe they would make that claim, again based on their own reasoning.
    - Udik 7y ago
      > A civil court would not typically rule that a defendant ... should be expelled from their academic program True, but nothing prevents an internal committee from simply acquiring the results of the court and applying sanctions on that base. In fact you don't even need an internal committee, you just need a general rule that applies automatically.

jaccarmac 7y ago

Sometimes you want to have people behave in a way which reflects higher ideals than mere legality.

weberc2 7y ago
As far as I'm aware, these "tribunals" are dealing with issues like rape and sexual assault, which are actually crimes. As far as I can tell, the generous interpretation for their foundation was that the legal system affords due process rights to the accused. The not very generous interpretation is that some powerful ideologues wanted a mechanism to discriminate against a particular protected demographic.

sneak 7y ago

The problem is that it is reasonable to expel people (and, indeed, to want to expel people) with a much much lower burden of proof than would be required to lock them in a cage. There absolutely should be a different standard for “can continue to be in this school” and “can continue to walk down the public sidewalk”, and also decided by different people.

mieseratte 7y ago
Why should they have a lower burden of proof?
- jayd16 7y ago
  For starters its a civil vs criminal distinction.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    The government is imposing penalties for criminal behavior. Classifying that as "civil" is a farce.
    - throwaway2048 7y ago
      You can be sued in civil court for criminal actions.
      - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
        You can be sued in civil court for money. You're not held in prison or kicked out of school by government fiat in the meantime. And the damages (if any) are imposed after the court proceeding. The exceptions are related to things like civil asset forfeiture, which are of questionable constitutionality and are similar to the rules we're discussing insofar as they are both worthy of contempt.
        7y ago

hammock 7y ago

The answer is in the article: Title IX requires them to. Specifically, the new federal guidance that was issued during the Obama administration.

mieseratte 7y ago
I understand “why,” in that they are required to. What I don’t understand is why this is a thing to begin with. Government end-runs around standard systems of due process is odd.
- denkmoon 7y ago
  Keep it contained. Keep it within your control or within the control of your cronies, and then you'll always get the outcome you want. The people pushing this aren't in it for fairness or due process.
- gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
  You can trace this mentality about government back to the progressive era. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_branch_of_government
- gedy 7y ago
  From the article: "This ideology is a successor to liberalism. It brandishes terms that superficially resemble normative liberalism—terms like diversity and inclusion—but in fact seeks to supplant it. This new regime, in which administrative power has been fashioned into a blunt instrument of deterrence, marks off a crucial distinction—between the liberal rule of law, and the punitive system of surveillance rooted in identity politics known as 'social justice.'”
  - doodliego 7y ago
    It's neo-Stalinism, the goal and methods are both fundamentally anti-democratic. It's effects are as bad as the McCarthyism and red scares of the mid-20th century.
  - 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

drewrv 7y ago

Ideally that makes sense to me, but unfortunately courts take a long of time and don't always pursue cases thoroughly. Given that reality, I don't know how an institution is supposed to handle the following scenario without their own tribunal system: Student A and Student B have a class together. Their dorms are next door to each other. Student A rapes Student B. Is Student B expected to attend class every day with their rapist? To live next door to them? How could one expect Student B to maintain their academic performance in that sort of environment?

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
Your scenario and the scenario where someone is falsely accused are indistinguishable prior to a court proceeding. In the second case the victim is the person being falsely accused. Then you would have the same problem with the victim being unable to maintain their academic performance if you kick them out of school without due process. Let's even admit that forcing a rape victim to live in the same dorm as their rapist is untenable. So that option is off the table and one of them should leave, but in that case it would be the same burden (of leaving) on each class of victim and the tiebreaker should be innocent until proven guilty. On top of that, it may be possible to live in a different dorm or take different classes while remaining at the same school, which is a lesser burden than an innocent victim being forced out of the entire school.
klipt 7y ago
What if Student A and Student B both get drunk and have sex. The next day they both feel they were raped. Which one do you expel? Currently the de facto assumption is whoever files a Title IX report first is the victim and whoever files second is the rapist. I'm sure you can see how this system can be abused: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/title-ix-is-too-easy-to-abuse/561650/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/title-ix-i...
- jessaustin 7y ago
  This is an easy determination in a case of heterosex: the male is the rapist and the female is the victim. Other cases could be more difficult.

paggle 7y ago

Sometimes an organization needs to act with less power to punish, but also less standard of proof. For example, NFL player Ray Rice was caught on video punching his girlfriend unconscious. The NFL can’t put him in prison, but they did suspend him from the league, because he was a toxic brand even though his girlfriend did not press criminal or civil charges. These universities are government organizations, but also like to think of themselves as independent, so I can see the jam they are in.

rplst8 7y ago
It's one thing when there is incontrovertible proof, it's another when it's he said she said.
wnoise 7y ago
Many of them are not government organizations. Even the ones that are, are state organizations, not federal. They do all take federal money though...
- paggle 7y ago
  The Supreme Court has held that most Constitutional protections from the federal government also apply to state governments.

shawndrost 7y ago

I don't want to wade into the specifics of campus tribunals, but the broad mechanism here is very commonplace and uncontroversial, no? Eg if I work for an NSF grant recipient and I spit on my boss, and I get fired with no court ruling, would you find it confusing/objectionable?

AnthonyMouse 7y ago
If firing you was a requirement to maintain the NSF grant? Yes, that would be objectionable, because then it isn't your boss (a private person/organization) but rather the government imposing the penalty without due process.
- shawndrost 7y ago
  Unless I'm missing something, the principle you find objectionable is generally legal, widespread, and uncontroversial. In point of fact, the NSF requires grantees (and their scientists) to follow many requirements, and imposes penalties upon them without due process. Movie distributors force the same things on Netflix and their employees via partnership contracts. An umbrella organization like Boy Scouts imposes membership conduct requirements on its independent affiliates and their members.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    In this case the government isn't just allowing the school to use judicial procedures the government itself couldn't use without violating due process, it's requiring them to. That's different. And movie distributors and Boy Scouts are not the government. And when a private organization deals unfairly with a private person, due process is still available in the form of a court proceeding (e.g. a suit for unfair termination), but in this case that would either be dismissed (e.g. because the school was following federal requirements) or put the school in an impossible situation where the federal requirements require them to use an unreasonable procedure that subjects them to legal liability by an innocent accused person.
jhbadger 7y ago

ineedasername 7y ago

Leaving aside the hot-button topic of sexual assault, there are plenty of sub-criminal or borderline actions that can occur that the college needs to deal with. Not all violations of a code of conduct are criminal violations. They'd much rather "sentence" an underage drinker to an alcohol education session than have all such students arrested. A lot of this is mission-driven: Schools honestly believe their role is to turn some of these types of things into a learning experience. Now, you might disagree with this approach to any/all of the above, but this is the reason that answers your question. Source: I work in higher ed technology, at times very closely with some of the disciplinary groups.

ANPEQ-1 7y ago
"Learning Experience" vs. "Permanent, intractable and public Scarlet Letter" :|
- ineedasername 7y ago
  Again, I said leaving aside the controversial issue of sexual assault. For something like illegal drug or alcohol usage, except in very egregious circumstances, the goal is to avoid such a "Scarlet letter" by providing the student an opportunity to deal with the issue without involving law enforcement, e.g., drug/alcohol education programs, counseling or addiction services, and so on.
tomp 7y ago
Good point, but underage drinking is a victimless crime. I’d be pretty appalled if I was raped and the only consequence would be that the rapist was expelled...
- ineedasername 7y ago
  Underage drinking in and of itself may be victimless in some sense, but schools want students to be responsible, and from a liability point of view they can't simply ignore it when they see it happening. But neither do they want to refer all such cases to law enforcement. So therein lies the desire for education programs and addiction counseling when it is indicated. Sexual assault is much more complicated. If the accuser doesn't want to report it to law enforcement and press charges, the maximum penalty the school can inflict is expulsion. Historically this has been a problem in a variety of ways. First, schools have sometimes been accused of discouraging the accuser from going to the police. That problem has resulted in dedicated sexual assault response plans to avoid that sort of thing and work with the accuser to connect them to appropriate resources, counseling, etc. Beyond that, the school is in a bind: prior to either legal action or a school-based disciplinary hearing for violation of the code of conduct, it is punitive to inflict punishment like suspension or force schedule changes to avoid the accused coming into contact with their alleged victim. At the same time, if there was an assault, it can very much exacerbate the harm to the victim to keep things as they are. I don't know of a good solution to this. It often results in the accuser being the one that has to change their schedule or drop out to avoid coming into contact with their alleged attacker. Again, I don't have an answer that both completely protects a victim from further trauma at the same time that it provides the accused with protection from penalty until they are found guilty. Personally, I think it helps the situation when the accuser is willing to go to the police because that opens up other options like a restraining order that can both protect the victim but also provides judicial review before the accused's rights and privileges are abridged. That is still far from ideal in many cases though. No easy answers here.

Lazare 7y ago

If I run a startup, and one of my employees is making other employees uncomfortable, and he keeps getting accused of harassing other employees, and is generally just making some of my best engineers unhappy, hurting productivity, and ruining our carefully constructed culture... ...I can fire him. I mean, obviously I need to go through the proper HR procedures, follow local employment law, respect the terms of his contract, etc., but I have no obligation to keep him employed if I think he's a net negative to my company. Arguably I have an obligation to not keep him employed. And I certainly have no requirement to wait until he has been convicted of a crime; it's not even clear any of the above is a crime. Similarly, if I run a resort, and one of the guests is so unpleasant they're driving away other guests, or if I run a restaurant, and one of the guests is making other guests uncomfortable, or I run an apartment building, and one of the tenants is behaving poorly. A university is a business. People come and pay money in exchange for a service, and if someone is interfering with the ability of other people to receive that service, or making people reluctant to come and pay money, it's perfectly fine for them to be asked to leave. If what they're doing happens to be a crime, then by all means, also report them to the police, but it's kind of odd to suggest that you shouldn't expel students except if they've been convicted of a crime. That being said, I think universities are doing a terrible job here, and I think that given the extreme importance of a university education in modern life, the disruption that being expelled entails, and the stigma that will follow someone if they are expelled, we need to be very careful about the process here. My local dollar store will ban you from the store if they think you shoplifted, and I assume they get it wrong sometimes, but it's fine, because being unjustly banned from a dollar store does not ruin your life. Being unjustly expelled from university could! Things are broken and need fixing. But a world where you can only be expelled on conviction of a crime makes no sense either. The discussion need to be about the correct amount of protection needed.

ellius 7y ago
"A university is a business." This is a massive false equivalence. For one thing, most of the "employees" in your metaphor are eighteen to twenty-two years old. Not to mention the fact that students are regularly put through the ringer and expelled on the first accusation. It's hardly akin to the "repeat offense" scenario you outlined in your first example. And comparing being expelled for an alleged sexual assault to being asked to leave a resort for rude behavior? Come on. This is a different situation than anything you described. Universities have much more of a guardian and stewardship role than an employer, and rape is a fucking crime. It should be handled by the mechanism we've created to handle crimes, i.e. criminal courts of law.

scarmig 7y ago

The court system is a very rigid structure. It's costly, and in the USA inherently has components that make it ineffective to addressing rape accusations, particularly the right to cross examine the accuser and how a good defense attorney will use that right. Oftentimes a victim doesn't want to go through that process and is mostly interested in not having to be confronted with their rapist every day. That doesn't mean anything, one way or another, about how well these university tribunals work. It's just pointing out deficiencies in the existing court system. Another way to think of it is balancing false negatives and false positives. The court system, ideally, errs on the side of minimizing false positives, because of how damaging they are for the accused. That inherently means more false negatives, and aspects of the process that are also much more burdensome for victims to navigate. Universities are trying to create an alternative system, where more false positives are accepted and consequences are less severe, and more focused on making sure the victim doesn't have to confront their rapist in day-to-day life than on life-altering consequences for the accused or protecting the public more generally from repeat offenses.

dmckeon 7y ago

Institutions often want their own tribunals so that they can more strongly influence both the outcome of investigations and decisions, and the public messaging about them. The underlying goals are not justice and equity, but protection of and advancement for the institution itself. Consider universities, churches, and HR departments.