The College Fix

Hanna Stotland offers a lifeline to students ousted for what she calls Title IX ‘gray zone’ violations

An Illinois-based education consultant helps students who have been accused of sexual misconduct transfer to new universities, including Ivy League schools.

Amid changes to Title IX that have eliminated rights to a live hearing and cross-examination, Hanna Stotland’s services offer a lifeline to students facing disciplinary action over what she calls “gray zone” violations.

Title IX includes federal regulations concerning sexual misconduct at educational institutions. Students who have been accused of sexual misconduct are often required to participate in “Title IX hearings.”

If a university believes a sexual misconduct claim has been established by a preponderance of the evidence, meaning there is greater than a fifty percent chance the claim is true, students will often face expulsion from their college or university.

Stotland, however, questions the fairness of these proceedings.

She told The College Fix via email she does not believe that a finding of responsibility under Title IX automatically indicates someone’s at fault, given that the “preponderance of the evidence” standard is not a very high bar.

“In any justice system, if you change a procedural rule to make it easier to convict the defendant who goes to trial, you incentivize guilty pleas,” Stotland said.

Her practice often deals with cases she describes as existing in a “gray zone” in a New York Times video op-ed. This includes incidents where intoxication complicates consent, commonly leading to severe academic consequences for the accused, predominantly male students.

Her “median case” is “a hookup where the complainant alleges violation via intoxication,” the Harvard Crimson reported.

Even in cases where the sex was apparently consensual, male students are nevertheless found to have committed sexual misconduct and face expulsion from their college or university as a result.

MORE: Biden Title IX changes threaten free speech, due process: legal experts

Further, recent changes to Title IX include the elimination of the right of the accuser to a live hearing, as well as the loss of the right to cross-examine witnesses.

Stotland told The Fix that following these changes, many students began reaching out to her for consultations surrounding their cases, inspiring her to begin this specific practice.

“Students started reaching out to me and seeking help. The work needed doing, no one else was doing it, and I thought that I was uniquely situated to do it well,” Stotland said.

She previously worked as a legal career counselor at Northwestern University School of Law after 14 years of informal consulting in various college settings. She focused specifically on crisis management.

Now she “has helped 314 students expelled from school for Title IX violations either transfer to another college or apply to graduate school,” the Crimson reported.

Stotland told The Fix that many of these students don’t realize there is help available. She hopes her practice can change that.

“So many students embroiled in Title IX don’t know that there is help out there at all. They just give up and assume that their education is over. So my first priority is getting that basic information to students who need it,” Stotland said.

She assures students that despite the seemingly difficult task of transferring schools, there are many openings at colleges and universities across the nation.

“The 200 or so most selective colleges in the country get all the attention, but the vast majority of colleges accept most of their applicants,” she said.

“There are a lot of schools out there that need to fill their classes, and those schools can offer great opportunities to students who have been through all kinds of crises,” she said.

Underscoring Stotland’s work, one expert states that a sexual assault violation has a “lasting impact” on a student.

“To be sure, being dismissed from a school and getting prosecuted for a crime are not the same (though both can occur based on the same incident). But the collateral consequences are often quite similar,” Title IX expert Markus Funk wrote for National Review.

“School discipline, far from being an ordinary or private matter, has a lasting impact that can follow a student, or staff member, for years to come,” Funk wrote.

The College Fix reached out to Harvard University multiple times via email for comment, but they did not reply.

MORE: Coastal Carolina raises evidence standard for accused students

IMAGE: The New York Times/Youtube

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