University Assailed on Sex-Crime Trials

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 18, 2000 | by Andrea Billups

Critics claim a sexual-misconduct policy adopted by Columbia University violates the civil rights of students charged with such offenses, denying them due-process procedures,

A Philadelphia foundation that advocates campus liberty is pressuring Columbia University to revoke a new sexual-misconduct policy, which it says tramples on the rights of students. The policy, adopted in the spring and put into effect this fall, eliminates certain due-process procedures in handling complaints of sexual assault, date rape and other related crimes. Accused students cannot confront their accusers, question witnesses or bring attorneys to proceedings.

"We have learned from history that special tribunals feel an exalted sense of prosecutorial zeal and that it is precisely when charges are serious and issues politically charged that we need the fullest protections of procedural safeguards to protect the innocent and to discover the truth" says Alan Charles Kors, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania and president of the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

"As it stands today, students at Columbia are far less free than students who attend the City University of New York or Staten Island Community College," says Kors. "The privilege of attending Columbia should not require students to give up the expectation of receiving decent treatment and fundamental fairness from all of Columbia's programs, including its campus disciplinary system."

Under the university code, a student can file a complaint with the university's sexual-misconduct office. A panel of two deans and a student, trained in hearing the issues, interviews those involved in the incident separately. The panel then renders a judgment that is passed along to the dean of the accused student's college. A student who has been charged with a violation may bring a "silent supporter" to the proceeding. The victim may elect to forgo the campus procedures and instead file a criminal complaint.

The new policy faced little opposition when it was taken up by the faculty-staff senate last February. It was endorsed by Columbia President George Rupp and much of the faculty. School officials defended the sexual-misconduct policy in a statement: "While the Columbia procedures incorporate basic due-process standards, the United States courts have ruled that imposition of every criminal-law due-process requirement is not necessary to ensure a fair and effective process for handling the violations of university policies."

Ralph L. Holloway, a professor of anthropology at Columbia who served on the faculty senate last spring, was among those who disagreed with the new policy. According to Holloway, repeated calls for statistics and reasons for the abrogation of basic rights were ignored. "I feel reasonably accurate when I say that those of us who had qualms felt as if we were on trial for having them" says Holloway. "Academic freedom, in the sense of being able to voice an opinion without some form of sanction, explicit or implicit, is becoming increasingly difficult, certainly at Columbia, if not everywhere."

The Columbia College Conservative Club actively opposes the policy as well. "The policy states that neither the accuser nor the accused may have legal counsel present, although they may seek legal advice outside of the hearing" says Ron Lewenberg, president of the club. "The actual effect of this is to end even the pretense of the accused having the constitutional protections we hold so dear in real courts."

Meanwhile, the New York Civil Liberties Union has urged the university to repeal the policy, and the Wall Street Journal's editorial page has criticized the university as well, questioning how the faculty -- with the exception of a few professors -- could allow the diminution of students' rights. Noted the editorial: "None of this can be surprising, given the limitless power today of gender and sex-related offenses and the related irrationality now accepted as rational thinking on these matters."

In the meantime, Gerard S. Harbison, a professor of chemistry at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, wrote to Rupp: "In my capacity as a research adviser to a group of very bright under-graduates here at UNL, please be informed that while your current policies on sexual misconduct, which effectively abolish due process for accused Columbia students, are in place, I will be advising students not to attend graduate school at your institution."