I can’t get on board with the underlying assumption here. UChicago’s obligation to restrict an activity will be dictated by the provisions of the student handbook. That’s the contract that governs all students - male and female. There is not a separate standard dependent on one’s sex.
Seems to me Doe should proceed under the student handbook and attempt to prove the elements of either harassment or defamation as UChicago defines it. Then establish that UChicago had knowledge of the protest and did not restrict it.
Just to be clear, this is how I understand the timeline:
At some point, John Doe has some kind of sexual encounter, separately, with Woman 1 and Woman 2, maybe not in that order.
Woman 1 files an administrative sexual assault claim.
A university panel decides against Woman 1's claim.
Woman 2, who is a friend of Woman 1, publicizes Woman 1's claim and her own on social media. Woman 2 organizes a small, embarrassing but nondisruptive protest at John Doe's theater project. (It seems that Doe, Woman 1, and Woman 2 are all involved with University Theater. Some of this is drama in the drama club, which is rarely news, except that now some of the principals have gotten lawyers.)
Doe has his lawyer threaten Woman 2.
Woman 2 files an administrative complaint against Doe for his long-ago offense.
As a pre-hearing remedy, Doe is told to change out of Woman 2's Physics section.
Doe sues both Woman 2 and the University for damages, making public Woman 2's blog posts about their hook-up.
Woman 2 and Doe settle. Woman 2 withdraws her complaint, which is never decided administratively.
The University tries to get Doe's complaint dismissed.
I doubt I disagree much with Hanna that the University did not handle this well. Maybe it should have taken some action to discipline Woman 2 after her social media campaign and protest. That’s a pretty close call, though, because clearly she had some first amendment rights, too. Her administrative complaint maybe should have been squelched faster, and Doe not told to change Physics sections. Although we don’t know when anyone in an official position learned about the woman’s blog . . . and, frankly, we don’t know her side of the story at all, since all of my facts are coming out of reports of the guy’s complaint.
All of that said, it offends me that Doe is claiming damages against the University. How much damage, exactly, has the University caused him? The University did not accuse him of sexual assault; two women he had sex with did. He may not have been guilty of sexual assault, but he was pretty clearly guilty of being enough of a jerk to have the women awfully angry at him. The University didn’t discipline Woman 2 for attacking him on social media – but, since when is it the University’s role to stop one student from calling out another for sexual misconduct on social media? And how could the University have stopped it in advance, as opposed to meting out discipline after the fact? Same thing with the protest – how much advance notice did anyone have? Did anyone have adequate information to make it appropriate to shut down a nondisruptive protest? And how much damage did a second-year student suffer when there was a small protest outside the play he directed?
Actual damages here would be measured in pennies, not dollars, much less hundreds of thousands of dollars. Doe has done more to publicize the claims against him by filing his suit than anyone did before he filed it. Out in the real world, no one would have a duty to protect poor Doe from the wrath of women he screwed over. (No one would have afforded them an administrative remedy to use in seeking revenge, either. But that was a federal mandate, the University didn’t have a choice.) It’s just crazy to turn this kind of teenage drama into federal lawsuits.
It’s not clear what the woman accused the man of, or what the University knew about the facts and when it knew them. Or, indeed, what the facts are. And the University doesn’t “immediately expel” anybody – it gives them notice and a hearing. Which it doesn’t publicize, either.
There isn’t “overwhelming evidence” of anything. There’s a couple of embarrassing blog posts which make it look like the woman was a willing participant in sexual activity with the man on one occasion, and then was furious when he told her that he hadn’t really broken up with his ex. I am not going to pretend to be a legal expert on this, but it’s hardly out of the question that procuring sex by fraud, common as that is, would constitute some degree of sexual assault. And lying to a prospective sex-partner about how you had broken up with your girlfriend (or left your wife, or were not married), in order to get her consent – that’s fraud. It’s a pretty stupid thing for society to devote a lot of resources to stopping, but it’s something the law may well condemn (and the world would be a better place if it could be stopped).
Anyway, my point is that she may well have had a half-decent claim against him, although not one that would reflect so well on her if aired in public. Not exactly grounds for summary expulsion.
How about expelling him for using lawyers to intimidate a classmate without going through some kind of internal mediation process first? I wouldn’t do that either, but it wouldn’t be crazy.
Fair enough. But supporting the conclusion that the encounter was consensual doesn’t necessarily mean that there was no legitimate basis for her complaint. What it does is muddy the waters enough to make it unlikely any neutral decisionmaker would give her any relief.
“And the University doesn’t “immediately expel” anybody – it gives them notice and a hearing.”
True, it doesn’t immediately expel anybody. It DOES immediately suspend people and force them off campus and out of their classes, forthwith, without a hearing. It’s happened to a lot of my students, including a couple at U of C (not the plaintiff here).
“Which it doesn’t publicize, either.”
It’s awfully hard to move out of a small dorm or theme house on a random Wednesday in the middle of the quarter without attracting attention. The Maroon helpfully covered such a move on at least one occasion.
“And how much damage did a second-year student suffer when there was a small protest outside the play he directed?”
When the protest attracted press coverage of an event with his name on it? I’d say that’s meaningful reputation damage. It’s foreseeable, and probably intentional, on the part of the protestors.
I agree that lawsuits, even John Doe lawsuits, raise the profile of a case, but Doe may have felt that he was so “outed” already at this point that it was better to proceed and try to clear his name. I’m sure that that’s the goal, not collecting damages.
“How about expelling him for using lawyers to intimidate a classmate without going through some kind of internal mediation process first?”
When she’s libeling him? The “cease and desist” isn’t a tough call for me there.
After reading the complaint it appears that the protest is not at all a main issue in this litigation. It is ancillary and used to frame his claims of harassment and defamation via social media.
The protest amounted to a dozen students congregating at Reynolds Hall which I believe is close to the theater where John Doe’s production was taking place. It was a small demonstration with signs protesting rape in general with no mention of John Doe’s name. It neither interfered with the production nor did it shut it down. It is the social media activity by Jane Doe, some relating to the protest, that John Doe contends amounted to harassment. Doe believes UC had an obligation to address the social media activity and failed to do so.
I see nowhere in the complaint where John Doe claims UC had any obligation to shut down the protest.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you here except that she should be given the opportunity to defend herself in a hearing. Due process for her too. And expulsion would be one penalty to consider. There are cases where students found responsible for sexual assault were not expelled. Often the accuser is fine with something less and that is considered when the panel levies the penalty. In this case John Does appears to have taken that route.
But there was no finding of sexual assault. Woman 1 had a hearing, woman 2 withdrew her Title IX complaint.
What we have here is regret for having sex with someone who may have lied to get sex. Consent at the time (and a little boasting on social media), regret after.
Well as far as Woman No.1 (Roe) we don’t know, all we know is that the panel could not meet the burden of proof and John Doe was found not responsible. As far as Woman No.2 (Doe) it seems her blog postings contradicted her allegations of assault – at least that is what is being reported. Yes, she withdrew the complaint but offers no explanation as to why.
John Doe named her in the litigation against UC, however he just released her from the suit on terms that he did not share with the court. It was reported though that he settled for her making a statement that nothing that transpired between them was against the law or in breach of any UC policy. If she was represented by counsel I cannot imagine that it didn’t also include a provision that precluded him from proceeding against her again for the false claim. Maybe I am missing something but I don’t see what he gets out of that deal.
Anyone who has read any of my posts on this issue knows that I am uncomfortable with the notion that Title IX should require universities to be the bad sex police for 18-21 year-olds, although I accept that there’s a point where it is appropriate to provide administrative remedies to make certain students aren’t denied meaningful access to education. I am even less enthusiastic about making universities the gossip police for 18-21 year-olds talking about people with whom they had sex, or almost-sex, or wished they had sex, whatever. And, yes, universities should probably step in if a student (or other community member) engages in a systematic campaign of defamation against another student (or other community member). But it had better be very systematic,and clearly defamatory, or the university in my perfect world has every right not to get involved. And there certainly shouldn’t be any expectation that the university could intervene in real time and shut down someone’s Facebook account to protect someone else. Whatever the university does will be weeks or months after the fact.
So maybe I have sympathy for this guy’s plight, but I don’t have any sympathy for his lawsuit.
Let me also thank heavens that Facebook did not exist when I broke up with my first girlfriend.
This is another well publicized, real time example of the sausage making that sometimes occures in our legal system. Someone enacts broad and expansive rights and policies that are new to the law. Then when the application of those rights and policies provide results that shock our collective conscience, there is the laborious efforts by the courts to claw things back to a system that the larger body politic can live with. That is exactly what we are seeing now in all of the lawsuits highlighting the logically tortorous results coming out of the tribunal system. It is beyond sad that dozens if not hundreds of lives are being destroyed as part of that process, but it is the only way the current system can be changed to something that more closely resembles our traditional ideas of justice. So for that reason, I disagree with @jhs.
Not sure if you read the complaint in this case but I don’t think this incident falls within your description above. There was nothing that would “shock our collective conscience” coming out of the Title IX panel with respect to John Doe. In the first case they found in his favor and concluded her claim could not meet the PPO standard.
With regard to the second woman he also filed 2 complaints with the Title IX office. The one for harassment dealing with the social media activity was addressed by a Tile IX coordinator (who was male by the way.) He declined to process this complaint – he believed the underlying issue was not based on gender discrimination which is a requirement for a Title IX proceeding. He suggested Doe contact another Dean who handled general complaints under the code of conduct. Doe never did so and later stated he was waiting for the Dean to contact him.
I believe the second complaint John Doe filed with the Title IX office was in response to the second woman’s filing and he was claiming it was retaliatory. He filed this litigation before his Title IX case was assigned to be heard. He named her as a defendant in the litigation and then simply agreed to release her, despite the fact that she is the one that he seems to have the most to complain about.
@HarvestMoon1 I read the article, but not the complaint. And I don’t know if this particular case is egregious enough for the courts to step in and change the college’s process. That really wasn’t my point. My point was that the way the legal system works is that when you have an inarguably expansive change to the law then cases will arise that will test and tweak different aspects of that change. I assume from the description that at the end of the day this case poses a challenge to our understanding of the term harrassment, and what if anything Title IX requires a school to do when the alleged harrassing conduct is not university sponsored. Another facet of the mattress girl case, or for that matter the Yale basketball case. Different facts, some you would think would be dispositive (lack of institutional involvement here vis Columbia’s at least arguable participation in the alleged behavior there). But the courts are just digging into this and deciding what the law really requires, and as importantly what Title IX requires. We will see some cases uphold the process in place, some will tweak it and some will just flip it on its head. Some will be inconsistent with each other, at least at first. Hence the reference to sausage making.
Agree that the courts are going to have to help define limits, but it would be helpful to have the appropriate parties joined in the litigation. Releasing Jane Doe gives the impression that he is more interested in deep pockets than in his cause of action. Or there is more to the story…
What John Doe wants or doesn’t want, shouldn’t be the only issue. Material falsifications in student disciplinary proceedings should be pursued as their own disciplinary charges, similar to how perjury charges can proceed in the courts, regardless of how the original case resolves.
OJ Simpson is and was a public figure. The defamation laws differentiate between public and private figures.
It’s certainly not the only issue considered by the panel, but it does appear to be one that many schools factor in. Personally, I don’t have a problem with it.
Defamation laws may vary due to celebrity status but anti-harassment laws are the same for everyone. OJ was certainly harassed after the acquittal and technically defamed. Signs went up around Brentwood referring to him as a murderer/butcher. His $20M pay-per-view TV deal was cancelled and his talent agency dropped him with no explanation. He was frozen out of Riviera Country Club and he could not walk onto the streets without mini protests following him. He threatened to sue the National Organization for Women claiming they were depriving him of the right to make a living.
If you want another example in addition to Casey Anthony just substitute George Zimmerman who was not a public figure.