Universities around the country received a letter on April 4 drafted by the U.S. Department of Education calling on them to do a better job of preventing sexual assault on campus and investigating claims of alleged misconduct.
The letter came in light of new evidence that under the current system — so far adopted by most universities — perpetrators are rarely expelled and, as a result, their victims drop out of school.
“Survivors are really the ones getting punished,” said Erin Darlington, a University graduate teaching fellow for sexual violence prevention and education. “It’s a University issue, and it’s a larger societal issue.”
As it stands, most sexual misconduct cases involving students at universities are heard by a judicial board composed of faculty and students who decide what disciplinary actions are appropriate punishments for acts of assault.
Currently, the University follows a similar model as other institutions around the country. When a student files a sexual misconduct claim against another student, the case is referred to Carl Yeh, the school’s director of conduct and community standards. Yeh then decides whether to immediately send the case on to a panel of four to five students and faculty from the University Student Conduct Hearing Board or offer the accused student the option of an administrative hearing.
If the student chooses an administrative hearing, Yeh does not have the power to suspend or expel them, nor add a negative note to their transcript — actions reserved for the Student Conduct Hearing Board.
“One of the toughest decisions I have to make is to decide if this is something I want to send on to the panel,” Yeh said. “There isn’t a case that doesn’t challenge my training every time.”
Yeh said he is often hesitant to refer cases to the panel because victims are questioned at the hearing.
“We live in a culture where we blame victims (of sexual assault),” Yeh said. “People tend to jump to conclusions that victims are at fault because they put themselves into unsafe situations, were under the influence of drugs or alcohol or weren’t clear that the sex was not consensual.”
“There are so many points where blame can be turned on the victim,” Darlington said, noting that most female students never report the incidents let alone follow through on the process for having their case heard by the University.
The efforts by the federal government do not abolish university hearing boards all together. Instead, there will be new standards for when a sexual assault claim merits action by administration. Universities must now follow a “preponderance of evidence” standard for investigation, meaning evidence needs to be more likely true than false.
Yeh said the University currently follows this standard to begin an investigation. However, for a perpetrator to face expulsion, the evidence must prove clear and convincing — a higher standard indicating it is substantially more likely that the alleged assault is true.
For victims, however, compiling evidence against their offenders is complicated. There are usually no witnesses, and alcohol, which is a factor in an estimated 50 percent of sexual assault cases every year, often blurs a survivor’s recollection of the incident, Yeh said.
“There’s not a lot of information we can analyze,” Yeh said. “We’re not equipped to be a legal system.”
The University is taking new measures to better protect students and is considering revising the student conduct code to make standards clearer.
“We can only hold people to the rules that we’ve set,” Yeh said, adding that the complicated nature of sexual assault makes it difficult for any system to vindicate its victims.
“We don’t have that much power,” Darlington said. “Social norms don’t stop at the walls of the University.”
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