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Washtenaw Watchdogs

Federal Oversight of Sexual Assault Investigations is Needed

4/14/2014

5 Comments

 
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Douglas Smith: Chief Watchdog
The Office of Civil Rights will be on campus this week to investigate the University’s handling of the Gibbons rape investigation. They are also investigating cases at several other universities around the country. I hope that they are looking at the wider issue of how to prevent sexual assaults on campuses rather than just the handling of individual cases.

I have been trying to think about reforms that might improve the situation regarding rapes on campuses. My two biggest concerns are that the processes are reactive rather than proactive regarding sexual assaults and that many universities have very poor procedures for due process.

As a retired transplant pathologist, my experience with federal oversight has primarily been with investigations of scientific misconduct and oversight of transplant programs. I think there are some lessons to be learned from these two areas.

Since all of the proceedings in an investigation of sexual assault are kept secret under FERPA, there is no way for the public to police whether or not the University is following the published procedures. Thus, I think that some federal oversight is necessary.

When a university conducts an inquiry or an investigation regarding scientific misconduct, the university must prepare a report of their findings and their sanctions to the Office of Research Integrity. The accuser and accused are also afforded an opportunity to send a rebuttal. ORI reviews the report, along with the rebuttals, and decides whether to support the findings and sanctions. If they support the findings and sanctions, the accused may file a complaint and appear before an administrative law judge. This assures the accused of a quasi-judicial appeal that affords due process. I think that this will also reduce the number of cases that end up in civil court, in the long run.

A similar review process for sexual assaults on campuses would maintain confidentiality but allow federal oversight. The OCR would also see how each university handled such cases and what sanctions were applied. This would allow the OCR to refine its guidance and provide some consistency between universities. OCR could also spread “best practices” within the academic community.

In the transplant field, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services publishes statistical reports each year on each transplant program. This allows patients to have information that can help them chose which transplant program they wish to enroll in. OCR could publish similar statistical reports on sexual assaults on campuses, which would give Universities incentives to improve the handling of sexual assault cases as well as incentive to reduce the number of sexual assaults. This would also give lawmakers and federal regulators objective data on whether or not sexual assaults were increasing or decreasing and whether existing laws or regulations should be changed.

With regard to being proactive, I am seeing a number of cases that don’t rise to the level of a crime but which I would classify as predatory behavior. This includes reports of women being served alcohol mixed with Nyquil in order to get them to pass out. I was also just at a court hearing about a case where two UM students were accused of rape but the judge did not find probable cause of force but the two men had been sending each other text messages about how they were planning to set up a situation where the female student would have a “threesome” with the two men. There is also a major component of over serving alcohol to underage students in order to “get lucky”.

These kinds of predatory behavior are precursors to sexual assaults and if the University knew that such statistics would be publicly available, they would have an incentive to prevent sexual assaults rather than only reacting after a sexual assault has occurred.

It would be nice if the Universities would be motivated simply because this is a serious problem of student safety but the fact that the Clery Act was required in order to get Universities to report crime statistics shows that universities often put protection of their “brand” above student safety. I think that federal oversight of sexual assault investigations is necessary to really motivate University administrations to put maximum efforts into preventing sexual assaults of their students. 

5 Comments
Man hater university
5/8/2014 09:44:28 pm

If a person is killed on campus, do they call the police or do they call the campus administrators?
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if the crime is real, they call the cops. If the crime is another bogus claim, then call the university administrators (university administrators dont care on iota about a young man's rights).
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The most obvious place for matriarchal power is in the university where young boys have zero constitutional protections if accused by women

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Another Statistic
12/24/2014 05:34:00 pm

You got it backward buddy....I was physically bullied an dab used in the Student Union, told to call DPS back if it continued. Called them back and guess who gets blamed? Flukey events- I track him down as a Law Student and Law School protects him, blames me. I go to OCR (I believe its as called). Guess who they blame? I go to the Sexual Assault people (I felt it was a gender crime). She refuses to help. I happen to tell a Law Student I know the story of crazy boy at his school. He looks askance at me as though crazy woman over reacting as usual (eye roll)...lo and behold...a month later, crazy boy Law Student is witnessed going crazy on fellow Law Student....my Law School acquaintance gives the first (and almost only) validation I will get. Go to Ann Arbor police and what do they tell me? To bad it happened on U of M property, DPS known to be 20 years behind. I was more pissed about how I was treated by every single representative of the Univ, than by the actual incident itself. Total Victim Blaming. A year goes by and reps from OCR come to my job taking care of the computer labs and give us a whole song and dance on how they want us to feel safe on campus and that we can talk to them if we have any concerns...I raise hand....well...that's funny bcs you did nothing except blame me when I needed your support....and in room of 25 students, only a handful female, another young woman raises her hand and says, yes, when my boyfriend couldn't handle the breakup and decided to stalk me, you guys also blamed me for it and gave me no support...this was all about the same time the DPS watched a female student get stabbed to death by her abusive boyfriend at U of M housing. The University mostly disgusts me on multiple levels. It is like one big, giant frat house and if they decide you are not a submissive female, WATCH out.

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The War on Men (Ground Zero for the war on men takes place at our universities)
5/8/2014 09:49:00 pm

In the case of every serious crime on campus, you call the real police.
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Why does Title IX allow universities to treat young men as 2nd class citizens?
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If a young woman and a young man have consensual relations while both are intoxicated, arent we happy the law treats the boy as the only one who can be punished. It's all part of the war on men

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Another Statistic
12/24/2014 05:47:16 pm

What I went through is NOTHINg I am sure....A law professor there told me of women being raped by their professors...if I think I had a hard time, what of the many women who suffered worse crimes? Again, I wasn't nearly as mad about the actual incident as how it was treated. Later in life, another somewhat similar situation occurred where in my gut I knew it was a gender based dominance type assault but I was not supported by the large urban public school district I worked for (pretty typical actually)....what do you know- I find out the kid has done the same assault to a colleague (female) of mine who stupidly didn't report it ("I didn't want it on his record") Thanks a lot pal...still police, admin do nothing, start to get pissy with me because I want reports, consequences, justice. (How dare I- is that really whats best for HIM?!) Finally, a month or two later, flukey discovery (I am very good at those, I should probably be a detective investigating these corrupt institutions) is made that his gf wants to break up with him, but every time she does, he chokes her out....I don't think she would have ever told ANYBODY the truth if the whole school didn't know what a fuss I had made to get this kid held accountable for his actions (better as a juvenile when he can still maybe get some help than later, going to prison). FINALLY, due to domestic abuse laws, they took action on this kid. I could tell you many more stories now that I think of it. It crosses all boundaries, all institutions, all levels and its pretty sickening if you ask me.

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Man hater university
12/26/2014 10:41:25 pm

I would love to discuss this with you.
Too bad you never learned to communicate in written manner.
In all laguages, there are two universal ways to separate ideas.
Paragraphs and sentences.
Without paragraphs, you have an amorphous meaningful series pf poorly organized sentences all thrown together.
The police dont take seriously crimes that are NOT reported (they dont have esp).
If women refuse to report crimes then your solution is to eliminate rights for men.
That is why you are a misandrist because you serk to eliminate rights from men

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    Author Douglas Smith

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