The College Fix

ANALYSIS: Most students agree criminal due process should be meted out by police, not campus administration 

Rape is a crime, sexual assault is a crime, yet at college campuses across the country, these two heinous acts continue to be arbitrated on the same level as cheating on a test. They are often dealt with by biased and powerless college judiciary systems that tend to pass over due process and either issue meaningless reprimands to the perpetrators of these crimes or hurt innocent students.

Many students at colleges across the nation in the last few years have filed state and federal grievances over their administrations’ mishandling of allegations of sexual assault.

Likewise, there are tales of woe from students who have been wrongly accused of sexual assault and yet are thrown under the bus by campus kangaroo courts.

These due process dilemmas recently surfaced at Dartmouth College on a gossip website, Bored @ Baker, which only allows students with a Darmouth.edu email address to post anonymously. The offending post described in vivid detail how to rape a particular freshman female, mentioned by name.

The post provoked unequivocal support of the young woman on the part of students and prompted demands of justice. The administration investigated, involving the website administrator, the local police, and the FBI. When the identity of the perpetrator was conformed, most students suspected the matter would be handled by the police. Instead, the student was simply suspended, provoking ire from all corners of the campus.

This and countless other such incidents only demonstrate how inept colleges are when it comes to dealing with criminal offences such as rape and sexual assault. Despite myriad demands for these reports to be handled by the police, little progress has been made. School administrators show little regard for due process, using the feeble claim of supporting the victim.

Amanda Childress, Dartmouth’s Sexual Abuse Awareness Coordinator, stressed the importance of bypassing such hassles.

“Why could we not expel a student based on an allegation?” she said recently. “It seems to me that we value fair and equitable processes more than we value the safety of our students. And higher education is not a right. Safety is a right. Higher education is a privilege.”

Her comments, made at a conference at the University of Virginia in mid-February, showed both a lack of respect for the victim’s right to justice – and the right of the accused to due process.

In Dartmouth’s case, the student identified as the perpetrator of the act has been suspended, though in spite of Childress’s efforts, he has yet to be actually expelled. Meanwhile, information regarding criminal charges – if any have been filed at all – has not yet been released.

Many students have responded with outrage on the very same site that caused the debate to unfold, Bored @ Baker.

While students universally backed the victim, many expressed worry that their due process might too be sacrificed for the sake of justice, never mind the facts or their side of the story.

Many male students expressed concern that their rights would be waived if they were ever falsely accused of a sexual crime.

Most students, both men and women, agreed that due process, preferably conducted by the police and not the college, is extremely important to them.

Some campus radical groups and individuals showed support for Childress, citing what they see as an institutional problem of fraternity-based rape culture that can only be solved by taking away others’ rights.

Indeed, when Childress said “it seems to me that we value fair and equitable processes more than we value the safety of our students,” she completely bypassed the idea that “fair and equitable processes” are the bases, not the antithesis, of safety.

College Fix contributor Sandor Farkas is a student at Dartmouth College.

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