Yale’s policy does in fact give both parties the opportunity to submit questions for the panel to ask the other party or witnesses. The panel maintains the discretion to choose the questions to ask.
The panel does maintain the discretion to call witnesses to testify on behalf of either party. I am supposing they call those that they believe to have relevant information. That should not be too hard to determine once the investigative report is submitted.
Both parties are given 10 minutes to make a brief statement to the panel and they submit their statement in writing as well.
Correct, there will be nothing from Yale unless they have to respond via the lawsuit if his lawyer proceeds. No one knows much of anything other than sometimes colleges get it right and sometimes colleges get it wrong.
Re: post 58 saying “The interesting thing about this case is it was not the person who claimed that she was assaulted who started the process according to reports, it was someone she told she was assaulted.”
She reported her accusation to the Title IX office … It isn’t clear to me if the Title IX coordinator or another “school official” filed the complaint.
ESPN reported,“after Montague and the woman had been involved in a sexual relationship, she reported to a Title IX coordinator in November 2015 that Montague had nonconsensual sex with her in his room in October 2014. Montague said the sex was consensual and that she returned to spend the night with him after the alleged incident.”
The Washington Post reported the similar, " According to Stern’s statement, the woman went to the school’s Title IX coordinator a year after the alleged misconduct and that a school official, not the accuser, filed the complaint that resulted in his expulsion."
@HarvestMoon1, no the tribunals do not decriminalize sexual assault. Actual assault is still a crime everywhere. The tribunal system is simply a parallel system which allows punishment under far looser standards than would ever be permitted in a court room anywhere with a functioning legal system, because some people decided that it was ok to sweep up some innocent guys in the net in order to ensure that fewer men who those same people deemed guilty would go unpunished. I am not sure why those of you who are fans of this system won’t admit that obvious fact.
As far as your question, yes, I would rather actual victims of sexual assault go to the police and cooperate promptly after the event than continue with this star chamber like system. I don’t believe in extracting a pound of flesh just to give victims some closure, and I truly believe the tribunal system is a joke that does far more harm than good. If the complaint involves an actual case of criminality, then the tribunal has no ability to imprison the criminal and simply puts more women at risk. How any of you can think this is a great idea is beyond me. The system does, I am sure, make it less likely the victim will report the crime to the police in the first instance. Even if she does, the tribunals build an entirely unreasonable expectation in how an adjudicatory process works, which I am also sure contributes to victims not cooperating in real investigations, already a huge problem in the real world On the other end, the randomness of the process, and the comedy of errors we see reported every time one of these cases bubbles up out of the cess pool, makes it easy to dispute virtually any allegation of assault. Everyone who is not an advocate knows the system is rigged. I don’t believe that many find it heartening that Yale, in its munificence, allows twenty percent of the accused to exit this process unpunished.
@OhioDad51, of course the panels decriminalize sexual assault, there are no criminal sanctions. So unless you believe that 100% of the accused appearing before the panels are innocent, you have students guilty of sexual assault whose sanctions are suspension, expulsion or in many cases just education classes and a reprimand. That’s quite a concession from a victim’s perspective, but more than she is going to get in the criminal justice system.
You continue to glaze over the fact that sexual assault cases, especially when “acquaintances” are involved, rarely make it to a prosecutor, leaving a victim empty-handed. We have all discussed the abysmal prosecution rates of these cases in previous threads, and I linked the report of the Police Summit where they acknowledged the problems. There is an expectation of justice, but it never arrives. That’s my question to you - are you OK with this? Letting sexual assault claims go unaddressed sending a very poor message to young men, as well as to the women who believe they were assaulted?
I don’t really know how to address your claim that “everyone who is not an advocate knows the system is rigged.” That sounds a bit paranoid to me, as if you believe that college administrations are comprised of and run only by women. I am going to bet those panels are evenly populated by both men and women. I certainly do not believe the panels are “rigged” and I am not an “advocate” - I have no connection whatsoever to any women’s groups or any other advocacy organizations or publications.
And let’s not forget that the people responsible for the tribunal system were in fact men - men who wield a lot of power in Washington. Why would these men support a system that is “rigged” against other men?
@HarvestMoon1, no offense, but it appears you do not understand what decriminalization actually means. The tribunals do not decriminalize sexual assault because any conduct which still fits that particular state’s definition of sexual assault (or rape, sexual battery, however it is defined in the particular state) remains subject to sanction. Decriminalization means that conduct which was subject to penal sanction yesterday is not subject to such today (prohibition’s repeal being an obvious example). The tribunals are a separate system. The only effect they have on the criminal system is, in my opinion, to make it less likely for women who are victims to report assaults in the first place. Which makes it more likely that someone who has committed an actual crime will be free to do so again. How is that a good idea?
I don’t glaze over it. I acknowledge it. I simply believe that the appropriate way to address this is to educate law enforcement and victims in how to address these situations. I believe you fix problems by working the problem. I do not find it helpful to simply take one class of victims and build an entirely different system. Not only does this leave that class of individual with irrational expectations (remember the MSU case where the victim was complaining about how many police cars showed up, and how the investigators handled the complaint?) but it does absolutely nothing for the majority of victims of sexual assault. If people were really concerned about those victims, it seems to me a better use of political capital and energy to try and fix the problems in the criminal justice system so that all victims can be helped, and those guilty of criminal conduct can be punished. I just don’t trust short cuts.
I also disagree that the tribunals serve an educational purpose. How could they, when the results of the system are both confidential and when they do become public so obviously randomized? On the facts available in this case, what lesson exactly are you teaching men? Do you really think that in today’s world guys go to college thinking it is all right to sleep with comatose women or physically force themselves on them? Really? If that were the case how in the world is throwing out a random guy here or there going to change that perception?
Because it is obvious. Forget about the “facts” in the cases we see being reported. I am more than willing to concede that the only cases we ever hear about are the egregious ones. Obviously no one knows what happened in this case, and as usual I am loath to try and debate facts that we do not have access to. That said, do you really think it is fair to kick a guy out of school three months before he graduates because of a he said/she said incident more than a year previous when the involved woman isn’t even making the complaint? You are ok with giving him a total of ten minutes to defend himself in such a situation? Is it just happenstance that Yale, an institution which you said has one of the best procedures you have seen, has an 80% convict rate? If these cases are really he said/she said, then wouldn’t a fair system run at best closer to 50%? But the convict rate is what it is because the rules are grossly tilted to favor the complaining party. Ask any of the lawyers on this board. Any system that even pretends to fairness would not leave so much to the discretion of the investigator or the committee, because otherwise you have no way to encourage replicable results.
What is more, the system itself was forced on the schools outside of the normal administrative rule making process and not by any actual legislation. You ever wonder why that was done that way? It has been enforced by targeted use of the OCR’s investigative power. Did it ever trouble you that colleges didn’t all jump on board voluntarily? I mean colleges are not normally thought of as terribly conservative places. You think Harvard and Princeton fought so hard against this system because they are filled with rapists who hate women?
And a last point, but if you can’t connect the dots between the OCR’s efforts here and the “War on Women” strategy in the last presidential election I really don’t know what to say.
@dstark, then “man up” and work to change the law. Why be satisfied with just helping a small slice of relatively well off young women?
I think I’ve taken a mostly middle ground position on this general issue in prior discussions. I don’t like the preponderance of the evidence standard for adjudications with serious consequences like expulsion, and for the same reason, I think procedural protections should be robust. However, the idea that colleges should decline to adjudicate criminal matters will not work in this situation. Colleges (reasonably, in my view) want to impose standards of student behavior that are more stringent than the criminal law. If they do this, then obviously they cannot defer to criminal courts in such situations. This is different from the proof problems.
Do you think the writer of that letter to Prince Harry will eat his words if it comes out that Montague faced multiple accusations of sexual misconduct?
“1, I think there are some wholly valid reasons why someone who is accused of sexually assaulting someone ought not to be given the right to cross-examine the alleged victim.”
I think that such action is a terrible hazard for a democracy and a fair criminal justice system.
Well, I don’t think the accused person himself should necessarily be allowed to cross-examine the accuser, but I’m not sure why his representative shouldn’t be allowed to do so.
There are (at least) two questions, and both of them are hard:
What procedures should colleges use to adjudicate disciplinary charges, including charges of sexual misconduct?
Should colleges discipline students for sexual misbehavior that would not constitute a crime?
As a parent of a current Yale student, I’m generally satisfied with Yale’s approach to this problem. It’s not perfect, of course.
^^^^ exactly, UCB. Let the real courts do the adjudicating. The colleges can exact whatever punishments they want as a result-and nobody’s tuition is paying for the process.
I see so many problems with the current Title IX system, not the least of which is that it excludes the vast, vast majority of women who are not in college when they are assaulted. These women are forced to go through our criminal justice system, which we all know needs improvement. Why not throw our resources and intelligent ideas behind reforms there? These college tribunals are doing absolutely nothing to help most women.
Also: maybe Yale can afford a semi-fair investigative and adjudicative process, but the huge majority of colleges cannot. Does anybody really think that Little Tiny Southwest University has the resources to do much more than eyeball a complaint and render a judgment? Seems like the men and women at most colleges are going to get inconsistent and arbitrary justice - and I’m willing to bet it’s the women whose complaints suffer most often in that scenario.
Better to fix the public criminal justice system already in place for everybody, and let colleges refer criminal complaints to that system.
@hunt, I see those questions as the ones to ask, as well.
In my opinion, the punishment of expulsion is a steep price to pay for conduct that is not criminal-and the price is steeper for a senior than for, say, a freshman who has better transfer opportunities.
Personally, if put to the choice at gunpoint, I would sacrifice a year in jail in order to keep my degrees. My degrees are more important to me than a year -or even two -of jail time. Not that this is what we are discussing, but I think the enormity of the price of losing out of a degree from a fine school is a larger punishment than many might think.
All that said, I tend to think this kid is guilty because I drink the kool-aid in believing Yale wouldn’t screw this up that badly.
Just to help people think about this a bit more dispassionately, consider this: assume Yale will expel a student for cheating. Of course, that’s not a crime. But we probably all would agree that Yale should be able to do this, as long as it follows fair procedures. Figuring out what those procedures should be isn’t easy.