Fair enough, although i would note that BYU is hardly typical. It’s an explicitly religious private school that has in place an antiquated code of conduct that students know about and agree to before enrolling. It’s rules include no drugs or alcohol or tea or coffee (either on or off campus), no sex, regular church participation, no homosexual behavior, and no visiting in the dorms of the opposite sex.
For all the failures of universities and colleges in general regarding campus sexual assault, we should not be looking at BYU as a good barometer of how these issues are handled, precisely because its religious values and moral code place much tighter restrictions on its student body than the honor codes of the vast majority of colleges in the US. When the honor code includes such a restrictive list of prohibitions, and it’s a private institution, it is much easier for them to act like total assholes in cases like this without running afoul of the law.
The university shouldn’t be in the business of going after people for committing crimes. If a person commits a crime and is found guilty the university may expel the person. They should assist the investigation in any way possible but I really don’t think they should found a committee of biased professors. Especially considering the fact that the most biased professors would likely be the ones who volunteer for the committee.
But it’s not all that different. “Valuable” students, such as athletes, have been given a free ride at many different universities, including public universities, in regards to sexual misconduct and other crimes. Universities simply shouldn’t be investigating crimes at all. Ever.
They are not investigating crimes. They are investigating possible violations of university rules. The fact that some rules violations might also be crimes does not mean that the university is conducting a criminal investigation.
If the alleged act is a criminal act, then police should investigate it, as i have said on more than one occasion already. But if the alleged act might also be a violation of university rules, then the university should investigate this in order to determine (a) whether university rules have been broken, and (b) if they have, what the proper punishment might be.
Do you understand the different roles here? Police = criminal investigation; university = disciplinary investigation.
Your point about special treatment for athletes is accurate, but it unfortunately seems to apply almost as much to actual law enforcement as it does to colleges and universities. In the case of Jameis Winston, for example, the most significant failings in the investigation were on the part of the Tallahassee Police Department. That is, leaving it to the cops didn’t actually improve the situation.
Correct me if I’m wrong but those people aren’t being kicked out for reporting rape, they’re being kicked out for other actions they took that happened around the same time as the rape. The CNN article makes it clear that the school isn’t investigating them for being victims of sexual assault and that the attacker in at least one story was being prosecuted.
If you said that someone tried to kill you while you high on drugs, the police could go after you for drug related issues brought to light in your report. Yes one of the articles conflated another university which seemed to have allowed the perpetrator go free although it didn’t go into the details about why he was so allowed.
It appears to me that, despite your previously stated agreement, you don’t appear to understand. Their argument is simple. If it’s a crime (which will inherently also violate university rules), it should be investigated by police, and not by the university. The university can then enact its policy after the criminal investigation, using the information uncovered in that investigation.
I mean, I don’t look into this a lot. I only know what I’ve read here. But I’ve seen it alleged that all the university “investigation” does is have hearings and listen to what the purported victim claims, sometimes without even letting the purported perpetrator explain their side. I’ve never once heard about DNA evidence or rape kits being involved in the University determination.
So their position appears to be that, if it’s a crime and the police get involved, the university should back off and let the police do the investigating. That the university does a really bad job of investigating while making sure that everyone’s rights are respected. That these “investigations” that basically are trials should just be real trials.
In short, there should never be both a university investigation and police investigation at the same time. When a crime is involved, the police investigation should be the only one.
That’s an absurd position to take. That makes it easier to expel students for minor or trivial transgressions.
The university should have the power to remove anyone from the community that they think poses a danger to it, regardless of whether they’ve been convicted of a crime.
Granting someone a kind of right to remain a student when they’ve been accused of something serious when they can be kicked out for much less creates a simply stupid situation.
A university, like an employer or many other kinds of commercial or social institutions shouldn’t have to be dependent on a successful criminal prosecution and conviction to get rid of someone that they simply don’t want there any more.
In addition, even in cases where a complete criminal investigation and trial results in a “Not guilty” verdict, the lack of a criminal conviction is not the same as saying that the accused did not violate university rules. The person might still have done enough to violate the university rules, justifying university discipline, even if no actual crime has been committed.
I believe that university disciplinary procedures should be fair, they should not take an accusation as prima facie proof of guilt, and they should give the accused party the right to make a defense, but this does not mean that they should be held up to the same “beyond reasonable doubt” standards as a criminal courtroom, and it does not mean that the absence of a criminal conviction is the equivalent of “no grounds for university discipline.”
They are effectively the same thing. It’s saying “Don’t report this rape that happened while you were violating the rules, or else you will be punished.” It ensures that rapes will be unreported. And that is ultimately the problem with punishing rape allegations. The problem is the bad result.
This is the same reason why immunity is granted in real trials. The person trying to kill you is the bigger threat to society, so the legal system will put aside the drug issue. The other result is allowing the killer to go free.
The other problem is that, in at least one case, she only told the police about the drug use. And they assured her she wouldn’t be prosecuted. But the university had someone on the inside who got access to secret documents and used it against her.
Seems to me that there should be immunity against these lesser violations when reporting something like rape. What the person says while reporting the rape should not be able to be used against them for these lesser violations. Sure, if you find other information that leads you to the same conclusion, then that’s fine. Or if it turns out it’s shown to be a false allegation, all bets are off.
But there is no reason to create the perverse incentive to not report rape because you will get in trouble for something else.
Both of you are arguing with a position I did not state.
I never said that the university is forced to only enforce their rules if there is a conviction. In the process of the police investigating the crime, they will also find out if the alleged perpetrator violated the rules. No conviction doesn’t mean he didn’t violate those rules.
And you didn’t agree with him. He said that the university should be able to do whatever it wants. You have rules and a principled stance. You aren’t saying that the university can do whatever it wants under the guise of protecting students.
And I was explaining the point of view of others. I don’t personally know which is better. I do know that I do not see universities as private businesses. I see them as closer to cities with a function. I think there should be a lot of protections for students against a possible capricious administration, the same way a real city has rights they cannot violate.
I also do not think a hearing is an investigation. An investigation involves what is basically police work. It seems to me that having the police do police work isn’t a bad idea. It’s not the same thing as having them make the final decision, just the investigation.
Maybe a separate investigation is better, but there better actually be people investigating who know how to investigate. Not this mockery of justice that I’ve seen described in these threads. (And it still is an issue of justice, even if it is about rules and not laws.)
And, yes, as I say in my previous post, I do think that there needs to be some type of immunity involved so people don’t avoid reporting rape due to having to admit to a relatively minor rules violation. Otherwise, the net result is allowing rapists to prey on those who violate university rules, and effectively use that as blackmail.
BYU supposedly has a lot of people who got raped but won’t report it for fear of being kicked out of school. This should not be the case.
this is within their purview. Crimes are not. Universities have historically been very lax about sexual assaults, sweeping it under the rug, not punishing rapists, and not reporting attacks to the police. Why anyone would think they have lower standards than the judicial system is beyond me. However, let’s pretend that is the case and that they do have lower standards.
If we look beyond the university to the workplace, there are quite a few employers who would simply fire someone accused of a serious crime because they don’t want their business name linked to the name of a possible criminal.
Universities, at the least the private ones, can pick and choose the students they want. If they decide they don’t want one I suspect they have the legal right to chuck them out. The BYU expulsions of women who reported being raped is horrifying (especially since they don’t seem to expel the rapists) but I doubt it is illegal in any way.
Your argument is so convoluted and confusing here that i don’t even know what you’re arguing. Nothing you have written here makes a bit of sense, at least in terms of advancing a coherent argument about the role of the university in dealing with on-campus sexual assault.
Maybe try again, this time with some clarity, if you possibly can.
So a woman goes to a man’s apartment to buy heroin. After he sells her the heroin, he demands sex in addition to the money she paid. She refuses, and he rapes her.
Is anyone here laboring under the belief that, as a matter of law, she is entitled to immunity on the heroin charge if she reports the rape?
Or is the prevailing sentiment that as a matter of peosecutorial discretion, she should not be prosecuted on the drug charge in light of the rape?
Can you ever enter a discussion like this with an actual position, an argument, a point of view? Or are you congenitally unable to make any contribution other than Question #2,719 from Bricker’s Socratic Law School Textbook?
Emphasis mine.
As i have tried to point out to you on multiple occasions, over multiple threads, on multiple topics, over multiple years, a “should” argument is NOT the same fucking thing as a statement of legal fact. You periodically note that you understand this distinction, and yet you constantly wade into threads with questions and observations that suggest that you have a lot of trouble identifying the difference.
In the cases above, BigT’s use of the terms “should” and “needs to be” clearly indicates that he is talking about what is, for him, an ideal situation, a situation that he would like to see. Had he, or anyone else in the thread, said something like “The law requires that rape victims be given immunity for any crimes they commit in proximity to the rape,” then you’d have a point. But no-one has come anywhere near suggesting this, and thus your contribution here is nothing more than another chapter in the ongoing saga of Bricker Gratuitously Brandishes His Law Degree. If you had actually read the comments made in the thread, you would already know the answer to your own question.
And in case you have trouble grasping the point i’m making here, i’ll give it to you in Bricker form:
Statement A: “Recreational use of marijuana should be legal in all states and territories of the United States.”
Statement B: “Recreational use of marijuana is currently legal in all states and territories of the United States.”
Is anyone here laboring under the belief that Statement A is equal to Statement B?
Would you mind pointing out the incorrect legal claim made in this thread, regarding the issue of immunity for rape victims who also commit criminal offenses?
Your request seems to presuppose that I have asserted there is such an incorrect claim, as a matter of certainty.
What does exist in this thread are statements that I regard as ambiguous. That is, in reading those posts, it’s unclear to me if the writer is asserting such an incorrect claim, or merely offering an aspirational view about the law’s future direction.
As i noted in my first response to you, it is extremely clear, to anyone who actually reads his posts and interprets them honestly, that BigT’s arguments, at least, were aspirational.
I guess, though, that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right?
It’s flawed to analogize universities to private sector employers. Universities are employers insofar as it relates to their actual employees, but not overall. They are public institutions, obviously in the case of ‘state schools’ but effectively in every case. They have much less legitimate scope to tell people ‘go elsewhere if you don’t like it’, though they have some (even the govt as an employer has some).
And the sort of argument that tends toward (if not literally saying) they can do as they like is very much subject to the question actually asked in the OP, whether liberals and conservatives switch viewpoints on the issue of collect sexual assault. They might switch viewpoints within the issue when it comes to criticizing ‘sweeping under the rug’ v ‘kangaroo courts’. Some universities probably have both flaws.
I don’t see this (as an issue of first principals. If colleges were doing a generally good and consistent job of handling their legitimate role in sexual assault allegations, in cooperation with police and prosecutors, then it wouldn’t be a problem, on ‘know it when you see it’ basis. But it doesn’t seem they are. In some cases they are still apparently bending rules in favor of athletic depts (in particular) against accusers. In other cases they are not living up to their obligation to reasonably respect the rights of the accused as public institutions.
But as a general rule, not inviolable principal, it’s reasonable to take action against people outside the court system (such as suspending them), either by an employer or a public institution like a university, if the justice system finds probably cause to believe they committed a crime, ie formally charges them with a crime. It shouldn’t require a conviction to take any action, but as a general rule it shouldn’t be based on some parallel investigation or finding, especially without due process, when the actual justice system hasn’t even found a basis to believe a crime was committed.
If that would sometimes result in people being expelled from universities over non-criminal matters (cheating say), but others remained students in good standing when accused of crimes by other individuals but the justice system didn’t or hadn’t yet found probable cause, I don’t see a problem with that. A crime is more serious than a non-crime not only from the POV of finding justice for alleged victims, but also greater need to avoid false accusations against alleged criminals.