Handling rape hearings on campus

On Nov. 19, Rolling Stone published “A Rape on Campus,” anow-notorious storyabout the alleged gang rape of University of Virginia junior “Jackie” at a fraternity formal event her freshman year.

On Dec. 5, on the basis offurther investigationby The WashingtonPost, which found that the alleged fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, did not host a formal event the weekend Jackie claims she was raped in their house,Rolling Stonepublished an even more notorious“Note to Our Readers,”casting doubt over Jackie’s account and apologizing for having put too much trust in her story. In the note, the managing editor, Will Dana, wrote that the magazine was “mistaken in honoring Jackie’s request not to contact the alleged assaulters to get their account.”

The criticism was swift and fierce, with news outlets likeVoxarguing thatRolling Stone’s failure to speak to the accused in the reporting process failed both accuser and accused and, rather than protecting Jackie, left her vulnerable to allegations that she was crying rape.

I agree thatRolling Stonefailed in its journalistic duty: to paraphraseDana, the truth is almost always better served by getting both sides of a story. And I think that, ideally, universities would be able to do whatRolling Stonedidn’t and, through a swift and fair adjudication process, let both accuser and accused have their day in court.

Unfortunately, most universities do as poor a job adjudicating sexual assault cases asRolling Stonedid fact checking. If we want to get closer to the truth about rape on college campuses, and to protect, as fits the facts, the women who experience it and the men who are accused of it, universities are going to have to step up to the plate handed them by Title IX,whichstudentsfrom sexual harassment and assault.

The first problem is that victims are rarely encouraged to come forward with formal reports, and an informal report rarely results in anything more serious than ano-contact order. (Jackie,reportedlyoverwhelmed by options and a lack of guidance from the head of UVA’s Sexual Misconduct Board, chose to do nothing.)

Moreover, even when a formal complaint is filed, poor management of the adjudication process often favors the alleged assaulter and causes additional trauma to the alleged victim; trials are often called “the second rape” according to astudycommissioned by the Violence Against Women Act. This summer,The New York Timesdetailed thestoryof a sexual assault hearing at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, in which the victim’s rape kit results were ignored. An Occidental College student reported anothermishandled casetoThe Nation, claiming that members of the panel laughed and chatted with her alleged attacker during a break.

Finally, even when guilt has been determined, universities have not always enforced punishments significant enough to make the victim feel safe on campus. A student attending Davidson College, a liberal arts college in my North Carolina hometown, wrote anarticlefor Her Campus last spring detailing the minimal restrictions her attacker faced even after being found guilty: 20 hours of counseling and a ban from her Eating House, a social organization similar to a sorority.

These mishandlings are egregious, given that rape on college campuses is all too frequent. Aboutone in fivecollege students will be sexually assaulted during their undergraduate years; at Princeton, that number is aroundone in six. Yet, nationwide, rape remains seriously underreported — onlyfive percentof cases are reported to law enforcement — largely because victims fear the kind of treatment detailed above.

The University has made a number of strides in recent months to bring its sexual assault policies in line with Title IX regulations that may help remedy these problems,includingremoving students from the advisory panel and using trained investigators as fact-finders and adjudicators. However, on a campus where only six rapes caseswere reportedto University officials last year, as part of the University's agreement with the Office for Civil Rights, at least 11 previously decided caseswill undergo reviewfor violating Title IX. It’s clear that it will take more than policy changes to make a difference. Administrators will need to create an environment where victims feel comfortable coming forward because they trust that their story will be fairly heard and evaluated.

I am sympathetic to the difficulties universities face in adjudicating sexual assault cases. The stakes are high: a wrong decision could devastate a victim’s college experience or, conversely, destine the wrongfully accused to a lifetime of stigmatization in, among other things, finding employment, for which one former studentis suingWesleyan University. Moreover, there are a number of difficulties in determining guilt. Defining consent can be tricky when alcohol is involved. Victims of trauma may sufferfrom post-traumatic stress disorder, confusing their timeline or other details, and physical evidence in cases of assault is ephemeral.

But as long as rape continues to happen on college campuses, universities will have a duty to make campus safe for their students by giving sexual assault hearings a fair trial. When victims don’t have a voice on campus, they turn to off-campus outlets. Unfortunately, as theRolling Stoneincident demonstrated,those have failed them too.