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As Cornell Officials Revisit Policy 6.4, Students Recount, Criticize Process

November 12, 2014 1:06 am10 comments

By SOFIA HU

Editor’s note: The name of a Cornellian interviewed who reported being sexually assaulted to the University is being kept confidential to ensure she is given the privacy she has requested.

After being sexually assaulted, she was terrified of running into him with his friends at the dining halls.

“I was just scared because the person who assaults you, when you report it, they know you reported it because they have to go in to talk with the investigator,” Sarah said.

Sarah is just one of a number of Cornellians who report being sexually assaulted each year. Between 2010 and 2012, 19 individuals reported being sexually assaulted on campus, according to a data analysis by The Washington Post. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention one in five women will be sexually assaulted during their college years.

At Cornell, the handling of discrimination, bias and sexual assault incidents is detailed in Policy 6.4, a 61 page document that has drawn criticism from students, including those at the “Protest Against Rape Culture” on Sept. 30, for its perceived lack of disciplinary action against offenders.

Students experiencing Policy 6.4 firsthand after they reported bias or sexual violence incidents said they dealt with many unpleasant experiences, including running into the perpetrators on campus and the stigma associated with sexual assault.

A ‘Very Shameful and Embarrassing Time’

Sarah, who said a student sexually assaulted her in the spring semester of her freshman year, said reporting the incident to the University was a “really hard process emotionally.”

Sarah said she had met the alleged perpetrator through women in her sorority and went to a formal with him. On the day of the incident, she went to his dorm at 7 p.m. after he asked her to come over and do homework together.

She reported being sexually assaulted the night of the incident to officers from the Ithaca Police Department, who referred her to Judicial Administrator Mary Beth Grant J.D. ’88. The officers also asked for the perpetrator’s phone number and talked him that night, according to Sarah.

At Sarah’s first meeting with Grant, she told Grant the entire story, including everything leading up to the incident. Sarah said she accepted the option of filling a “no-contact order” against the accused, which meant the accused would face severe consequences if he contacted her.

“I had requested that besides any punishment against him that he would also have to take some sort of class on consent,” Sarah said. “He was very misogynistic, and I wanted him to take a class that would make him respect women more.”

The investigation of Sarah’s case lasted about three weeks. According to Policy 6.4, the length of investigation varies on a case-by-case basis but must be completed within 60 days.

During this time, Sarah said she did not interact with any investigators except for Grant, who Sarah met with approximately four times. Grant acted as a “liaison” and connected Sarah with Gannett Health Services’ Counseling and Psychological Services.

Grant also asked Sarah and the perpetrator to submit the names and contact information of friends and acquaintances who could testify about the case.

According to Sarah, these people spoke individually to Grant and were kept anonymous; neither Sarah nor the perpetrator were told who testified.

When the results of the investigation were released, Grant met with Sarah to talk about what was going to happen.

“She laid out what steps he had to take after the investigation when he was found responsible. He wasn’t going to be suspended from school. He wasn’t expelled from Cornell campus,” Sarah said. “He had to do certain things like take certain classes and complete a series of requirements.”

‘I Felt Really Unsafe’

During the investigation, Sarah said she “felt really unsafe.”

Immediately after she reported the case, a number of the perpetrator’s fraternity brothers contacted her, she said.

“A number of his brothers had texted me, like guilt-tripping me about it, but the chapter president called me and said, ‘I’m so sorry if you’re getting any shit from the brothers, we all support you, and what the guy did was wrong,’” Sarah said.

Sarah also said she felt “very uncomfortable” living on the same campus as the perpetrator.

“Even though I had this paper [the no-contact form] that said he couldn’t contact me, we were on North Campus together. I literally passed him every day. I at least wanted him to be moved to another part of campus so that we didn’t have to cross paths,” Sarah said. “I would go all the way to the back door of [my dorm] to get in, because I just couldn’t take my normal route every day.”

Daniel Manne grad — who has served as an attorney representing victims of sexual assault on college campuses — said the campus “is a small world” when it comes to these cases.

“All too frequently, fraternities, sororities or graduate departments learn about the alleged assault and the ongoing investigation. This can often make things difficult for both the accuser and the accused,” Manne said.

Manne, who has not advised any Cornell students, said that most of his interactions have been with administrators from other colleges concerning deficiencies in their procedures.

Sixty-one Pages

The University’s current procedures, as detailed in Policy 6.4, were last updated on Nov. 7, 2013. The document lays out how the Office of Workforce Policy and Labor Relations or the Office of the Judicial Administrator should handle and investigate complaints of bias and sexual assault.

Complaints brought by faculty or staff members must be filed with the Office of Workforce Policy and Labor Relations and the Office of the Judicial Administrator within six months of the incidents. Students must bring up complaints within one year of the incident, according to Policy 6.4, though there are some exceptions — including complaints where the accused is a faculty member.

As stated in Policy 6.4, the J.A. or the Office of Workforce Policy and Labor Relations have the “exclusive responsibility” for accepting and processing these complaints. If the offices decide to accept the complaint, they notify the accused that he or she has been named in a complaint. The accused student is given a copy of the written complaint and the identity of the complainant, according to Grant.

During the formal investigation, usually a team of two investigators — who are trained in legal and sexual assault issues — reviews each complaint by interviewing the accusing and accused students, witnesses and other forms of evidence, according to Grant.

Policy 6.4 states that both the accused and accusing person should be kept updated about the investigation and are allowed to seek advice from personal attorneys or advisors. These advisors can neither respond to questions for their advisees nor ask questions during the advisees’ interviews.

Both the accused and accusing people are allowed to submit questions for the investigator to pose to the other party or to witnesses, Grant said.

The lead investigator issues a written report summarizing the case. A panel of trained faculty review the report, which contains the investigator’s recommendations, and determine whether University policy is violated, according to Grant. Under Policy 6.4, both the accused and accusing people should be given copies of the investigation summary and are given 10 business days to appeal the decision.

According to Lynette Chappell-Williams, one of Cornell’s Title IX Coordinators, the administration is currently revising Policy 6.4 to “incorporate the latest thinking about best practices” and recommended changes will be ready later this academic year.

“We are continuously reviewing our procedures for addressing sexual violence to provide effective avenues for complainants to bring issues of sexual violence forward while balancing the fair process rights of the complainant and the respondent,” Chappell-Williams said. “Our next step is to engage the community in this revision process which includes reviewing the definition of consent.”

An Oral Warning

Students have criticized Policy 6.4 for stating that disciplinary action for harassment, including sexual violence, can include “an oral or written warning.”

Philip Titcomb ’17,  LGBTQ representative at-large for the Student Assembly, said such warnings are “highly demeaning and trivializing to survivors of bias incidents and sexual assaults.”

However, no information is available about what disciplinary actions members of the Cornell community may face for harassment or sexual violence. Yamini Bhandari ’17, vice president for outreach and women’s representative for the S.A., said that the range of disciplinary actions perpetrators actually receive should be clarified.

“There is a lack of clarity for who actually gets the oral warning, and I think that has contributed to some of the pushback from the Cornell public,” Bhandari said. “I do, however, agree that an oral warning is by no means enough of a punishment for someone committing such a serious crime.”

Even when the punishments are harsher, they may not be effective at changing the perpetrator’s perspective, according to Sarah.

“[The guy] still doesn’t think that anything happened. They don’t think anything of it,” Sarah said. “I was hoping that he would at least get suspended, because I don’t think he understood how serious it was. Him taking classes was just like, ‘So what, this wasn’t really serious.’”

‘With the Utmost Care’

Despite the policy’s many faults and complexities, several students said that for the most part, their personal interactions with University administrators were positive.

“[Grant] was very helpful and sweet. She has daughters, so she is very empathetic to how people feel when they’ve gone through stuff like [sexual violence],” Sarah said.

Titcomb, who reported a bias incident in March after a student physically attacked him and called him a “faggot” in Robert Purcell Community Center, said that the judicial administrator dealt with his case “with the utmost care,” though he said the reporting process was lengthy.

“The only qualm I have is that despite being attacked in early March last semester, no discipline had been taken until late October,” Titcomb said. “The process is touted as streamlined, but this is not the case.”

Author: Sofia Hu is a News Editor and previously a Senior Staff Writer for the News and Science departments. She can be reached at shu@cornellsun.com.
  • CU1

    This is the result of a push by leftist students on campus to remove oversight of sexual assault cases from the University Hearing and Review Boards (comprised of students, staff, and faculty members) to a secret process led by administrators who are ultimately employed by Cornell and who, one could argue, might do anything in their power to ensure that the University’s name isn’t tarnished. The arguments put forward by leftists were that victims were afraid/embarrassed to testify in front of other students/were concerned that their fellow students were incapable of handling such “complex” cases. This despite not supplying any concrete information to back these claims; from what I understand, the UHRB, where sufficient evidence was presented, was fair in handing down judgments, including suspensions and expulsions. The University tried to push this change also, saying that it was legally mandated, despite the legal opinions by numerous Cornell law professors and other non-Cornell affiliated universities to the contrary. The students, faculty members, and staff who serve on the University Hearing and Review Boards aren’t your average bunch; they go through an intense application process/interview and take their job very seriously. I’m glad that this new system is being exposed for the sham that it is. Shame on so-called victims’ advocates and the University for pushing this disgrace of a system on the University.

  • Hodge5

    As usual, we are given a completely one sided story where the accused is automatically assumed guilty and the accusor is automatically assumed 100% reliable.

    Of course, with such a mindset, the immediate conclusion is that the university is a disgusting institution that refuses to punish rapists.

    But that’s not the way things work. The justice system does not just punish rapists. The justice system in fact has TWO very important steps:

    1) Use evidence to determine whether a rape actually occured.
    2) If one did occur, then punish the rapist.

    When a moral panic occurs, like the one today on college campuses today about rape, or the one in America 10 years ago about terrorism, or the one 70 years ago about communism, or the one 300 years ago about witches, step 1 is very easily forgotten.

    This article, and the circus of people that it quotes, seem to think that step 1 is such a forgone conclusion that they should have no problem packing their things and leaving campus without delay if a random stranger on the street points at them and says “rapist.”

    Perhaps the subject of the article has been wronged and will never see justice. For this I am very sorry. But we have to learn to respect our justice system and all its imperfections. It never was about punishing as many people as possible. Where the truth is clear, we punish. Where there is uncertainty, we err on the side of mercy. All are equal under the law, so we cannot immediately assume the truth of one person’s words over those of another, like this article does. You too might benefit from these protections one day, if you find yourself the target of a zealous society out for vengeance.

    • CU1

      I agree with you generally, but, at least for one of the more serious allegations contained in this article, it is made clear (or claimed) that the perpetrator was found “responsible.” In light of that, the type of sentence was fairly light, and not one that the UHRB would regularly give out (the UHRB has a list of sanctions listed in the public record…but you have to actually physically go to the office to review the file).

      • Sixth Amendment

        In some ways it still is an issue of guilt. In campus rape proceedings the accused need only be found guilty by a preponderance of the evidence. If we accept the “responsible” finding as meaning the accused is guilty than any punishment short of prison is inadequate. But seeing as we don’t know if 51 percent of the evidence or 99 percent of the evidence pointed to his guilt, it’s hard to criticize the decision which may have been lenient only to account for barely convicting him. The lack of transparency renders fair oversight to be difficult at best

    • CU1

      I agree with you generally, but, at least for one of the more serious allegations contained in this article, it is made clear (or claimed) that the perpetrator was found “responsible.” In light of that, the type of sentence was fairly light, and not one that the UHRB would regularly give out (the UHRB has a list of sanctions listed in the public record…but you have to actually physically go to the office to review the file).

  • Sarah Paez

    I’m just gonna leave a little fact here:
    60%, on average, of sexual assaults in the last five years were not even reported. So, out of the remaining 40% of sexual assaults that were reported, 10% led to an arrest, 8% were prosecuted, 4% actually led to a felony conviction, and 3 PERCENT spent time in prison. I understand that you believe the justice system’s “two very important steps” for determining rape and punishing rapists are pretty much foolproof, but what you are actually saying is that you do not believe 97 PERCENT of people who have reported being sexually assaulted in their lives. And that is very, very wrong. Our justice system is fundamentally flawed, and the fact that people still go around saying we need to protect the rights of people who rape are very misinformed. Rapists are already being protected by our justice system. There is virtually no threat to accused-rapists’ rights tantamount to what you are projecting.

    • benny_jones

      You are very good at pointing out problems in the justice system, and completelly silent on offering any solutions. But let me go out on a limb and assume you think the solution is lowering the burden of proof on the accusor.

      Have you heard of Shelby County v. Holder, the recent supreme court case that struck down sections of the Voting Rights Act? Part of their reasoning for doing so was that racial discrimination in voting was so rare nowadays that the law as it stood was useless. Of course, what they failed to realize was that it was the law ITSELF which was an integral part in reducing discrimination, and that gutting it would surely reignite the problem.

      They saw a sturdy house standing on solid foundation, and said “the house is plenty sturdy, why do we even need the foundation?”

      You are doing the same.

      Giving you the benefit of the doubt that your uncited statistics are actually correct, I would agree that those are abysmally low conviction rates. Even still, it is likely that a fraction of those 3 percent sent to jail were falsely accused. But on the whole, it seems that due process is working as intended: a falsely accused person stands a good chance of being absolved. Indeed, there is little threat to someone falsely accused.

      So when the question becomes “how do we catch more rapists,” and your answer is “we reduce the burden of proof, innocent people barely get convicted, why do we even need those protections in the first place?” you are making the same fallacy as the supreme court did. The problem is not that there is a threat to falsely accused people, it is that there WILL BE a very real threat, should your policies be implemented.

      You have complete tunnel vision on solving the problem of convicting rapists, so much so that you have no problem if your kneejrek solution creates a myriad of other social issues. You cannot solve society’s problems by knocking down the pillars on which it was built, and these are an assumption of innocence, and due process in the court of law.

      But you don’t really care about any of this, do you? It’s very apparent in your use of words: “people still go around saying we need to protect the rights of people who rape” that you are completelly sold on the mindset that accusation = truth, and that fact finding and evidence are just unnecessary burdens. Nobody in their right mind is protecting the rights of rapists. That’s what you don’t seem to understand, is that before you have the full truth and evidence, you cannot call someone a rapist because YOU DON’T KNOW THAT.

      • Sarah Paez

        All of the statistics I cited are from rainn.org and have been pulled from the FBI, Department of Justice, and the National Center for Policy Analysis. As for your quotations of what I said… well I never said any of the things you have accused me of saying. But we won’t get into that. What I will say is that our justice systems errs on the side of too much caution for the accused, and not enough for the victims. You are correct that it protects the falsely accused immensely, and I would say that is a good thing, but what rights are given to the victims? Their testimonies are not considered “evidence,” and I understand that it is very hard to prove rape with anything less than DNA evidence (this, of course, is a function of the current justice system), but it seems to me that in this case the accused–regardless of falsity or truth–will 9 times out of 10 emerge with a slap on the wrist. How can we become a society that values its victims as much as the accused? I don’t have all the answers, but I sure as hell know something needs to change.

        • Guest

          It is of course a difficult situation for victims when there isn’t any evidence other than their word. But we can’t lower the burden to be so low that someone can be labeled a sex offender and spend years in prison and have his (or her) life ruined based on a 51% hunch over a he-said-she-said debate.

          Imagine if this happened. Perhaps you break up with your girlfriend or have a fight, and she says to you, “I’ll say you raped me, and you can’t prove otherwise!” And you rightly panic, because you know that you can’t prove that you didn’t. This is very different from her having to prove that you did, in which case you could have a better chance to defend yourself.

          • Bailey Dineen

            The millions of lives that are ruined by rape and this fantasy is what you care about. It isn’t just a “difficult situation” when people don’t believe victims: it is tragic, harrowing, potentially fatal, and so. overwhelmingly. the norm. Rape Culture is when people make strides to combat that dynamic and bring a semblance of justice for those millions of survivors, and the response is push back like this.