Loosely inspired by #MeToo news stories of late:
Suppose you are president (or whichever administrator ultimately makes the final decisions) at a university. A woman - a student in your university - comes to you and claims that she has been raped by a man - also a university student. The following circumstances apply:
There are no witnesses to the alleged crime.
Both students are people with clean backgrounds. The man has never been known to do anything like this, and the woman has never been known to lie.
No DNA/forensic evidence has been obtained or examined, because the accuser doesn’t want to go to the police. She wants the school to take disciplinary action, but wants to avoid the courts and their associated hassle.
There are no state/federal laws that mandate that you take a particular course of action (i.e., “you must give the accused the benefit of presumption of innocence” or something like that.)
The woman vehemently insists that a rape has happened, and the man equally vehemently denies that such a thing has ever happened.
The school itself has no policies or precedents that lay out what you are to do, or not do, in this situation.
Order a serious and detailed investigation, if the accuser agrees that this is acceptable. That’s always the answer for such accusations (in addition to informing law enforcement, if the accuser agrees). If she doesn’t want an investigation, than don’t conduct an investigation. If she wants some sort of punishment without an investigation, then inform her that I’m unable to take any action without conducting an investigation to determine what occurred.
What answer were you expecting? Were you under the impression that this is a challenging or difficult scenario to deal with? It appears trivially easy to me. Serious accusations require serious investigations, period, as long as the accuser is okay with that. Any formal punitive or disciplinary action to be taken must follow an investigation, period.
OK, but what is there in the outlined scenario to investigate? A university wouldn’t be equipped to do DNA/forensic testing like a police lab (and such evidence may have become biologically useless by this time point.) There are no external witnesses to question, as mentioned above. Since both students have clean backgrounds, as mentioned, they could both produce a bevy of acquaintances to testify to their good character. It is her word vs. his word. What would an investigation yield that is not already present in the above hypothetical?
Since this is only Post #5 thus far, I hope I can still guide the direction of the thread a bit before it gets hijacked:
I hope this thread can be about university-administration handling of such cases, and investigations specifically, rather than veering off into unrelated Supreme Court/Trump/Kavanaugh/only-tangentially-related-#MeToo territory.
Because for a certain type of dude, the only interesting part of rape is the dude. The girl is just a prop. And the only way it’s really, really interesting is if the story could be about THEM, and since they aren’t rapists, it must be a woman crying rape.
To the OP:
Who knows what an investigation would uncover? That’s the point of an investigation. One of them is lying. One of them will have holes in their story. One of the ways our culture enables rape is by chucking things into the “he said, she said” category far too soon.
You are constructing a strawman, a massively over-simplified scenario that doesn’t match the real world because it’s never simple.
I mean, this is like “hypothetically, if one of the foods in the student union caused catastrophic intestinal collapse, but you don’t know which one and have no way to tell, what should you do?” Who cares? It won’t ever be like that.
The administrator couldn’t possibly know this stuff until they actually conducted an investigation, including talking to old girlfriends (and boyfriends), background checks, etc. That’s the first step, barring preference from the accuser that they don’t want any investigation.
What’s your point? That it’s theoretically possible for an investigation to find nothing? Of course that’s possible, even if it’s very unlikely (if it’s a thorough investigation). So what? Yes, it’s possible that all the right actions might not yield the facts of the situation. It’s a shame that this is a non-zero possibility, but sometimes mysteries stay mysterious.
I don’t understand what you’re trying to get at here. Care to try and enlighten me?
OP - it may surprise you to learn that Universities have police departments and procedures for dealing with these complaints. A school with a good policy further calls the local city police if the complainant wants to proceed. Schools with bad policies frequently do absolutely nothing. I favor the first approach.
For the record, you brought up #MeToo in the first line of your OP.
Thanks - good info. I had always been under the impression that those were semi-police units but didn’t actual wield the true legal power of “actual” cops. Guess I’m reading and learning.
If they conducted a serious and thorough investigation at the accuser’s request, then that was the right thing. If the accuser agrees, they should refer this to local law enforcement. If the accuser doesn’t want them to, they shouldn’t.
I still don’t understand what your point is. Is your point that administrations shouldn’t punish people just because a student says they should? If so, okay. Why is this an interesting question? Do you have any cite that administrations are taking punitive or disciplinary action based on nothing more than the request of a student?
It’s not a gotcha. I’m asking what people would consider to be the appropriate action if a university and/or investigation can’t figure out well enough what has happened.
In the past, we had people argue for “presumption of innocence” akin to that afforded to defendants in a criminal trial, which would be an almost impossible burden of proof for a less-formal, less-equipped university to attain. (Some suggested the same with Kavanaugh in the Senate hearing for SCOTUS, which was also an unrealistic level to attain, different situation, different approach.)
What should they do if they don’t know what happened? Try and find out what happened. If they can’t, then I guess they’ll have to live with that mystery. Sucks, but that’s life sometimes.
Seriously, what debate did you think was to be had here?
I thought you didn’t want to bring up Kavanaugh (or other such accusations).
What results could possibly “flow from the mystery”? Maybe a monkey throws his poop? Maybe a bear rides a bicycle?
By who? Based on what?
Is this whole thing just point out the incredibly obvious point that colleges shouldn’t (and don’t, AFAICT) discipline or sanction students based on nothing more than the wishes of another student?
Yep, the college isn’t an investigative body. Refer it to people who are. Also refer the young lady and gentlemen to campus counselors or whatever mental health services are available. Longer term. I would probability suspend the dude if the police/DA find enough evidence to indict rather than waiting until the end of the trial but would let him back if not convicted.