At my alma mater, we had a townie get busted by the campus police for trying to solicit sex from (adult) students. Nonviolent, adult victims only. It went to real town criminal court and he got something like six months or a year of probation where one of the terms of probation was staying off campus. So he was personal non grata for that time. Don’t know what else happened to him.
And it’s true that the ease by which someone can slip onto campus without anyone really noticing varies greatly. There is a fairly small, private, religiously conservative school near me where outsiders probably stick out like a sore thumb. Just finding the campus is a challenge - it’s on a side road in a semi-rural area, and there usually isn’t that much happening there anyway, so “What are you doing today?” may be a very common question. It’s not like State U where there are a hundred things happening and English grad students have no idea what the senior undergraduate math majors are doing nowadays, and don’t really have time to care. There are also a hundred clubs for whatever floats your boat. Maybe that guy carrying a huge nasty-looking staff is going to that LARP club I heard rumors about. Or maybe SCA. Oh well, have to finish this paper.
I was on the student council at my alma mater (a big state school). At one point they were begging us to find local bands to come onto campus to play because they wanted more events. At no point did they ask for band member background checks or anything like that, they just wanted something happening. Times change I guess.
Also, at smaller schools the smaller student body is likely to lead to many students being able to get to know most of the other students by name and face, if not personally. At the State U’s of the world with thousands of students, faculty, and staff running every which way doing who knows what, it is much easier and natural to filter out other people and mind your own business. So people who don’t “belong” on campus are probably more likely to get busted at the smaller schools where it’s easier to notice out of place things.
I think if I was wrongly accused of behavior which constituted a crime and the university expelled me based on an administrative finding, I’d be filing a civil lawsuit naming the accuser and the university.
I could see the accuser similarly filing a civil lawsuit against the accused and the university should the accuser feel the university’s administrative finding fail to protect them.
Ultimately, if a person is accusing another of committing a crime, that person should seek redress from the law enforcement system (as well as having the option to file a civil lawsuit).
A new field for lawyers: Educational Law, for when you can’t chase ambulances
Exactly. And it could be argued that you agreed to the Code of Student Conduct when you enrolled, up to and including penalties for breach. The process is required to be outlined in detail in the student handbook and all relevant published materials, in both print and digital form. In fact, Title IX violations are required to have a whole separate section in the conduct section explaining the process, rights, responsibilities for all parties.
Leaving aside the hot-button nature of sexual misconduct, how exactly does this differ from any other infraction for which you might be disciplined?
I think the key here is that you paid tuition, possibly room and board, to go to college, so you’re suffering financial harm if you’re expelled based on a false accusation.
If there’s a conviction, then sure, you have violated the code of conduct and your tuition is forfeit. But if it turns out the accusation was totally baseless, and the university kicked you out anyway, I’m sure you could sue for recovery of tuition at the least, and possibly damages due to having to re-enroll and loss of credits for that semester.
And that’s not just for sexual misconduct, but whatever false accusation it is you’re being expelled for.
But you seem to be making the assumption that any accusation is a false accusation.
I’m not suggesting that anyone who is accused should be automatically expelled. I’ve said all along there needs to be a hearing. But the hearing will decide if the accusation seems true or false.
A university has to protect its students both from false accusations and from sexual assaults. If they go too far in trying to protect them from one thing, they’re not doing their duty in trying to protect them from the other.
And it has been remarked upon at length as to how this may be insufficient in the face of the reality of college life- both in terms of available remedies and in the window of time to effect them- and that we already accept a parallel civil process for dealing with many criminal actions.
You might be able to recover if you could show institutional error on the part of the college. But in a criminal case, if you are convicted based upon evidence presented in a fair hearing- even if it turns out you did not do it, can you sue the state if they did everything according to the law?
I do not see that being successful. You might have a good case against your false accuser, but as a rule there are no deep pockets there, so people want to sue the school.
Having paid tuition does not preclude you from being expelled “for cause”. Otherwise nobody could be expelled.
Being found not guilty in a court of law is not in itself necessarily proof that the acussation was flat out false. What, every time someone was acquitted the accuser and witnesses are up on charges of perjury? However: If you truly did not do it at all and the accusation was in fact entirely baseless, and the school could have easily determined it, but they railroaded you just because they wanted the media circus, letters to the paper by faculty members and protests at the games to stop already, then by all means sue them.
Yes. This is it exactly. Just because you were acquitted in criminal court doesn’t mean the accusation was false. The university should of not have to abide by the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard in order to kick you out.
In fact, I don’t even think they should have to meet the “preponderance” (more than half) standard. They should be able to take action based on “substantial” evidence.
The criminal charges should be a matter for the police. But I don’t see how the police should have the responsibility for deciding over issues of being expelled. I’m going to assume the police would agree and be very reluctant to get involved in that decision.
It seems kind of nuts to offer a student accused of rape a higher standard of innocence than a student accused of cheating on a mid-term. But that’s what some people are arguing.
A student accused of cheating will obviously not be facing any criminal charges. So the police won’t be getting involved and there won’t be any criminal trial. The student will just face an administrative hearing by the university. And if the university determines that the student probably cheated, the student will be expelled.
Rape is obviously a much more serious offense than cheating on a mid-term. But as far as the university is concerned, the possible outcome is the same - the biggest sanction a university can impose is expulsion.
But for some bizarre reason, some people are arguing that it should be more difficult for a university to expel a student because of rape than it would be to expel a student because of cheating. They’re arguing that an accusation serious enough to invoke criminal charges should somehow grant a student immunity from any university action that he might face for a lesser non-criminal accusation.
I generally agree with you, and I’m not a fan of judicial review of internal administrative decisions. But the analogy is complicated by the fact that a decision of cheating is generally supported by slam dunk evidence (“and here’s the cheat sheet” or “here’s the plagiarized passage”) while sexual assault accusations are much more nebulous. A student can’t really get another expelled for cheating, while they certainly can for sexual assault. I’m not sure what’s the right answer here, though.