True @hunt. I do support expulsion for cheating, which is not a crime. But in my mind the distinction is that colleges are the ultimate experts in academic integrity, and cheating is an academic offense.
@dstark, see @HarvestMoon1’s quote of Yale’s statement on the first page of this thread. My math is not great, but I believe 1 out of 5 is 20%. Or are you saying the quote is inaccurate?
And yes, you are correct that I am extrapolating that this is a he said/she said case based on the fact that the incident reportedly occurred more than a year before the hearing, that the alleged victim is not the complaining witness and the report on this thread that there are no other investigations against this guy either at Yale or with the police. But I freely admit we do not know all the facts.
Plus, you may recall that I was responding to a post which posited that the tribunal rules were justified because in the case of assault by an aquaintence, the situation is often he said/she said, and therefore our criminal system is inadequate. My point, again, is to illustrate that nothing comes for fre, and if you want to champion a system on the grounds that it is easier for women when they have no proof beyond their word, then you of necessity are putting more men at risk of being punished unjustly. And yet you all keep ignoring that point.
@Ohiodad51 - I am confident my brain can wrap itself around the concept of “decriminalization.” In the context of the college tribunal system, which is what we are talking about here, sexual assault is indeed decriminalized - there are no criminal sanctions. No one is arguing that outside that system sexual assault is still subject to penal sanctions.
I think the vast majority of them do not think that, but we do know it is happening. So either some of them do think that way or alcohol or other substances change their behavior.
With the facts we currently have, I will reserve judgment on whether it was fair or not. I have no basis on which to form an opinion. But the tone of your question seems to suggest that, despite your disclaimer, you might have made up your mind. I think that speaks volumes. Please go back to Yale’s policy - there are 3 situations where a Title IX coordinator can bring a complaint to the UWC on behalf of someone else. I have to assume one of those 3 situations is applicable to this case.
We connect the dots differently. You want me to believe there is some vast conspiracy at work here - some “rigged” system has been put in place to target college age boys, with women jeering in the background. Some kind of “power grab” or something worse. Never mind that a group of men has put the system in place. Somehow you connect this to a “War on Women” strategy. I don’t believe in the whole “War on Women” thing - it has never been my experience- so obviously I am not thinking along those lines.
My view is that the issue of college sexual assault had reached a point where it got national attention. Joe Biden took the initiative (as he usually does with issues concerning women), to try and get a handle on what was happening. He and his colleagues (men and some women) sat through congressional hearings listening to the viewpoints of police officers and victims. They also visited college campuses and heard from administrators and students. Given that the Dear Colleague Letter was issued about a year later, I “connect the dots” in a way that suggests that their conclusion was that there was indeed a problem on campuses, and women needed some help. So they stepped up or “manned up” as you put it.
While that’s true, I would also point out that many colleges, like Yale, are also residential, and thus have to be involved in interactions among students. They really can’t get away from adjudicating issues between students.
@hunt, I will take a shot
-
yes, under a clear and convincing evidence standard when the accused has access to counsel and the right to put on a defense, including to introduce evidence and witnesses in his own right and cross examine those testifying against him. I also would like to see a more arbitration like system, where the accused picks one panelist, the accuser another and those two select a third. I would say a majority vote controls for anything up to suspension for greater than one semester, and then a unanimous vote is required.
-
subject to the rules above, and assuming some type of appeal process to the dean or whomever, sure.
You need to go back and read what Yale said about the numbers…
You are reading and then interpreting based on stuff that isn’t there. Your biases are showing. 
I am not ignoring this point about he/said she said cases.
In 50/50 cases, the rulings should be in favor of the accused. That is my view.
Yale never said in 80 percent of the he/said she/said cases, the accused are convicted.
@Ohiodad51, I think we’re on essentially the same page here. I agree about the evidence standard, and might quibble about what other procedures specifically are minimum requirements. A lot of discussion on this topic previously focused on the imposition of the “preponderance of the evidence” standard onto sexual misconduct cases, which I did and still do disapprove of. The consequences are too great to justify that much weakening of proof standards–although not (in my opinion) so great as to require proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and it appears you agree with that. Yale does have a separate, more arbitration-like procedure that can be chosen by the complainant, and which does not include expulsion as a sanction.
@HarvestMoon1, sorry, but the word means what it means. And clearly your earlier posts intended to leave the impression that the alleged victim was giving something up by pursuing the tribunal system which is manifestly untrue. There is nothing to stop an alleged victim from pursuing both remedies. The tribunals are not preclusive.
As far as whether there are some guys who go to college and think it is ok to rape someone, we agree, there certainly are. My point is that we are not reaching those guys with this system, because those people are already operating outside the relatively clear bounds of our society. Therefore I disagree with your premise that we need the tribunal system to send lessons to young men.
And yes, I admit that I find it unlikely that there is clear proof of something understood to be a crime prior to 2011 in the situation at hand. Maybe there is. We likely will never know. But my comments are directed to the process itself, because the only way we can judge the fairness of a system is by reference to the rules which govern the process. So yes, in an individual case we may be able to say that a particular guy should have been kicked out of school in the second semester of his senior year after being given ten minutes to make his case. But overall, I find it unfair that this is the process in place. Does that make sense?
As far as the politics involved, we disagree. It’s not the end of the world. I would ask though why you think the Dear Colleague letter was issued the way it was rather than setting this process up through the administrative rule making process if you believe the situation was as clear as you seem to think it was five or six years ago.
@hunt, honestly I don’t think many of the lawyers (&@hanna) who despite our better judgment wade into these threads disagree all that much. I think we just perceive these issues differently than normal people. I am not sure how I feel about the election of remedy stuff in Yale’s policy. I get it, but I am just unsure how I feel about letting the complainant pick. But at the end of the day, all I want is an umpire who tells me what the strike zone is, and then calls each pitch consistently. I think must of the lawyers think that way. Know what I mean?
@dstark, you flummox me. What do you think “One out of five formal misconduct hearings ends without a finding against the accused” means?
And don’t put words in mouth. I get in enough trouble for things I actually say.
Let me just say something here that is just my opinion of what happens in at least some cases, and maybe a lot of them. A male student comes to the attention of the disciplinary authorities as a result of a number of similar complaints against him. Perhaps none of them are strong enough to justify tossing him out, but a reasonable person might well conclude that he is trouble and that the school would be well rid of him. So, when a case comes along with strong enough proof, he is expelled, and when his lawyer threatens to sue, the school lets the lawyer know (possibly for the first time) about the other complaints that were filed, and perhaps some others that haven’t been filed, but could be. So maybe there’s no lawsuit after all. Personally, I have mixed emotions about a situation like this, but I’m not sure I would behave much differently if I were the person who had to make decisions for the college.
To put this another way, a particular infraction may look quite different if it’s a first-time complaint, as opposed to a last straw.
The bottom line is that the powers that be at Yale are not stupid. They are not going to expel a star basketball player and student 3 months before he graduates on a whim. It wont be to prove a point and it wont be to avoid any legal drama. Regardless of how a PR firm spins it or a lawyer represents it, there has to be considerably more to the story. NO the girl did not report it herself and NO this didn’t come to the surface until a year later but unless you have lived in the shoes of the person who has been assaulted, you have no idea what is possible.
They could have had mutual friends, she may have feared retaliation. She may have felt that because they had a relationship that nobody would believe her. She may have trusted him and felt that it must have been a misunderstanding on her part. Sometimes it takes someone outside the situation to put light on the truth of it all. Like I said before, there is talk around campus that this was not his first offense. Why didn’t those girls report it either? What was it about this kid that intimidated them not to say anything? What was it that made them all feel like they couldn’t? Did his dean know of these other allegations? Maybe those other accusations were the other 4 of the 5 and this was icing on the cake? We might never really know.
I tend to agree with @memmsmom - there’s too much smoke here to think there wasn’t some fire to go along with it. I say he’s guilty! Of course, I really have no idea…
But that’s sort of the problem with these Title IX “courts” - nobody trusts them and so they give rise to wild speculation and a belief that somebody is getting screwed. Here, there’s a group that thinks the man is getting screwed…and I’m sure just as often, there’s a group that thinks the complaints of the woman are getting ignored. This is why our court system has what’s known as “due process” in the first place.
Not every formal complaint made at Yale goes to the UWC. As I understand it, the fact-finder weeds out at least some of them because there is insufficient evidence to file a complaint. So, it’s 80% of cases that make it to a hearing that result in some disciplinary action against the respondent, not 80% of all cases in which someone makes a complaint. Thus between July 1 and December 31, 2015, there were 78 complaints of some sort. During the same period, 5 new cases made it to the UWC for a hearing.
It’s pretty interesting—well, at least to me–to read through the publicly available summaries of the complaints and the resolutions. http://provost.yale.edu/title-ix/reports
In some cases, the UWC concluded that there was insufficient information to sustain the complaint, but nevertheless imposed no contact restrictions. Now, obviously, if the complainant had gone to the police in such a case, it is extremely unlikely that charges would have been issued. However, the benefit for the complainant was that (s)he at least got a sort of protective order without having to go to court. The respondent is benefited by the fact that there’s no court record of this. (I’ve no idea how it works in Connecticut, but in NY a restraining order is issued on the basis of allegations; there is no need to prove they are true.)
One thing I learned is that Yale pursues complaints against Yale staff, faculty, and students from non-students as well as students. So, in some cases, NON-college students do benefit from Yale’s system. Here’s an extreme example:
And the arsenal of disciplinary actions Yale can take is quite different from a court. For example, here is one summary:
In a similar case, a staff member was moved to a different location.
Yet another case in which a police report would probably not resulted in criminal action and Yale punished a faculty member:
Expulsions are pretty rare, but not unheard of. At least one did not involve an assault. Instead, a Yale student engaged in “voyeurism” and threatened the complainant if (s)he reported it. The allegations were sustained and the respondent was expelled. Now, voyeurism is certainly a crime, but a first offense might have just result in probation.
Anyway, I think reading through the complaints and resolutions supports the conclusion there is a need for this sort of tribunal.
"@hunt, honestly I don’t think many of the lawyers (&@hanna) who despite our better judgment wade into these threads disagree all that much. "
Just for the record, I’m a lawyer by training, just not a practicing one. So it makes a lot of sense that I’m in the same camp as other lawyers when it comes to the importance of procedural protections. Being able to impeach a witness or choose the evidence to present on your own behalf is a really big deal – on both sides! Accusers are just as hamstrung by a process that allows amateurs the discretion to decide who can bring in what.
My respect for just how hard judging is comes from working as an elbow clerk to two federal judges, one at the trial level, one at the appellate level, deciding civil and criminal cases. We’re talking about eminent professionals with decades of experience, who have lots of clear, written precedent to guide them, a staff of young attorneys to help them, and (usually) competent attorneys on both sides of the case who clarify the issues. My trial judge was first in her class at Northwestern Law, became a partner at an elite law firm, and spent ten years as a junior judge before gaining her lifetime position. Yet with all that, if you want to get it right, this work is HARD. Deciding whether a particular piece of evidence should come in is hard. Wording jury instructions is hard. Evaluating the credibility of a witness is hard. The job never gets easy, and judges never stop debating tough questions with their law clerks before ruling. If you haven’t been behind that curtain, you don’t know.
A random college administrator could learn all the steps of an appendectomy in a weekend, but nobody thinks that’s a good idea. This is a matter for experts.
@Ohiodad51 Where did Yale say the cases you are talking about are he said/she said?
I keep hearing the “4-5” number mentioned. My understanding is that there were 4-5 sexual encounters between these two individuals, and one of them was considered non-consensual. I have NOT heard that there were possibly 4-5 other women who have levied similar complaints. Big difference.
It seems like his threat to sue could have disastrous legal consequences if the latter were true.
Since I don’t know the actual facts, I have no opinion about the treatment of the basketball player. But at the same time, even if he is being railroaded, I am outraged by the failure to act against the basketball team. Even if “Gucci” is ultimately proven to be entirely innocent, the fact that the team would announce its support of someone who (at the time) had been expelled for sexual assault is completely unacceptable. The university should prohibit the team from playing in the NCAA tournament, and if the coach knew about the Gucci tee shirt stunt and did not stop it, he should be fired–no ifs, ands, or buts.
It’s hard to fault the basketball team for supporting a teammate who had been expelled for sexual assault when, supposedly, they didn’t even know he had been expelled yet, much less the reason for it. It’s unlikely that in fact they didn’t know, but it’s not as if the university told them what had happened. The first official public announcement that included the expulsion and a reason for it came after the stuff hit the fan. The basketball team apologized for its earlier demonstration after the expulsion and charges became public.
When I saw the video of what happened, though, the part that was most upsetting was not the team trying to show support for a teammate they may have believed had been treated unfairly – which meant they were being treated unfairly, too, since they were being deprived of a leader and a key playmaker just as they entered the home stretch of one of the best seasons in the history of the college. What was upsetting was the willingness of the crowd to go along, and to egg it on. The crowd was chanting “Guc-ci! Guc-ci!” But it’s far less likely that people in the crowd knew what the real story was, vs. the team members. Most of the people in the crowd doing that chanting probably had no idea Montague had been accused of sexual assault, whether it was one time or many times.
I agree the coach should be fired if he helped engineer the protest in any way. But if he merely knew about it . . . what was he supposed to do, exactly? I’m sure the university’s privacy policies prevented him from having an actual discussion with the team about what had happened. I would bet anything that if he knew what they were going to do, he told them it was a bad idea. Would you expect them to listen to that? They were protesting. This particular protest was in awful taste and wound up hurting their friend considerably, but in general I don’t think there’s anything horrible about a sports team protesting one of its members being treated unfairly.
I find it hard to believe that no one on the basketball team knew what the allegations were. The apology was the typical mealy-m9outhed “we are sorry we hurt anyone’s feelings.” The point is that they were openly supporting someone who had been determined to have committed sexual assault. Not acceptable under any circumstances (although they were, of course, free to say something like “Not the Gucci we know. We hope and believe that he will ultimately be cleared of any wrongdoing.”)
What was the coach supposed to do? Say “anyone who wears that shirt out there is suspended” and mean it. That’s his job. Then each team member gets to decide if its worth losing the game and a shot at the NCAA tournament.