Time Warp

A couple of weeks ago, a former Wake Forest University student appeared on the Today Show detailing both the facts surrounding her rape allegedly by two Wake Forest basketball players and also the disturbing treatment she received from the university when she reported the incident to them.

The student, who was a member of the Wake Forest band, alleges that the two basketball players called her into a room where they told her a party was going on following Wake's loss in the NCAA tournament in Miami.  When she arrived in the room, it was empty except for the two players.  One of the players then forced her into the room's bathroom and forced her to have oral sex while the other stood guard outside.  She reported the incident to Miami police, who based on the lack of any physical evidence or witnesses took no action.

When she returned to Winston-Salem, she reported the incident to university officials.  The officials urged her to report the incident to campus security and it was then put through the university's on-campus judicial board.  The student described the judicial board as being very insensitive to her plight and actually questioning her actions more than the actions of the players, which were the subject of the complaint that they were deciding.

All of this sounded very familiar to me.  It was as if the school at which I attended law school (Wake Forest) had gone back 20 years and morphed into my undergraduate school (Syracuse).  It was almost an instant replay of what had transpired on the Syracuse campus two decades earlier and it saddened me to know that so little had changed in that time period that any institution of higher education could be as incompetent at handling issues of rape and sexual assault as Wake Forest appeared to be in this case.

When I arrived at Syracuse University in the Fall of 1989, in the first 5 weeks of class that year, there were 6 rapes and sexual assaults reported to the university.  The rash of sexual assaults led to action on the part of the student body.  Protests were launched, changes were demanded and eventually some much needed reforms were put into place, albeit reluctantly by the university.  I was fortunate enough to be involved with the student run organization Students Concerned About Rape Education (SCARED) which was the main organization spurring such changes.  What we learned very quickly in our work at Syracuse is that colleges and universities look at rape and sexual assault as a problem to be covered up and swept under the rug rather than addressed seriously and confronted with open honest policies.

The way Syracuse dealt with these situations in the late 1980s and early 1990s was to first diminish the incidents of rape and sexual assault.  It was looked at as a behavioral issue or misunderstanding, usually growing out of the immaturity of young students and fueled by alcohol, hormones and bad judgment.  Students were told to report incidents to campus security, which were nothing more than glorified rent-a-cops who had no authority to do anything at all to arrest or file charges and were furthermore under no duty to forward the complaints onto actual law enforcement authorities.  Campus security would generally then forward the report through the Office of Student Affairs who would either hush the matter up entirely, or if pushed on it by the student would route the case into the Judicial Board, which was made up of other students with little or no training who would ultimately decide the case and issue a punishment (or not).

What generally happened was that little if anything was done to the offender, even if the judicial board found that something had happened and the student/victim would end up transferring to another school or dropping out entirely.

What was always most appalling about handling cases this way, is not only did it allow the university to under-report the serious violent offenses that were happening to their students, more often than not at the hands of other students, but it allowed a group of students to handle a case from beginning to end, and ultimately pass judgment on that was in fact a serious violent felony which should have been handled by law enforcement and state prosecutors.  Often the judicial board would make their judgment based on facts that were not relevant to the facts of the case, and would not have been admissible in court, such as the student/victim's sexual past, her clothing, whether or not she had been drinking, or whether or not she had consented to some sexual activity such as kissing or more prior to her saying no.  On at least one occasion of which I know a judicial board decision on a case actually derailed a criminal prosecution that was in progress when they issued a determination that no offense had occurred complete with a headline in the student newspaper "Student Found Not Guilty In Rape Case."

Student judicial boards are simply not capable of handling such issues and should not be determining these types of cases.  The treatment that the student at Wake Forest described receiving from the judicial board there was very reminiscent of the stories I heard from students at Syracuse who had been through the same process.

I almost had to chuckle to myself when the Wake student said that she was advised to contact campus security to file a complaint.  We generally referred to campus security at Wake as the "Parking Nazis" (they even wore brown shirts).  I can't even imagine even considering advising someone to report a serious crime to these group of incompetent law enforcement wannabes who seemed to get their jollies by making life as difficult as possible for anyone with whom they came into contact, much less going to them myself.  However, this as it did at Syracuse, allows the university to keep the problem "in-house" and control the issue, allowing them to avoid the publicity that such a situation would create for the school.

Fortunately, at Syracuse, many real reforms did come about.  But they came about only after constant and belligerent calls for reform by the students.  An on-campus rape counseling center was established.  The university begrudgingly became one of the first universities to openly publish the number of incidents reported both on and off campus and ended up being a leader among such reporting in the nation.  The campus security eventually received the status of peace officers, allowing them to actually make arrests and making them responsible for reporting crimes to the legal and judicial authorities.  Student education programs were implemented educating both men and women about rape and sexual assault, bringing the matter out from the shadows and making the campus more aware of what was going on and what needed to be done to deal with it.

Syracuse is far from perfect.  There were still incidents that were being hushed up as I was leaving campus and after, and I am sure that there is still a good deal of that going on now.  The judicial board still handles cases such as this, and based upon what I have read is still as incompetent to do so as they were when I was a student.  However, it did get better because of the commitment that students, faculty and even some administrators had to simply not accepting the status quo and demanding that real systemic changes occur.

That is what makes me so distressed about the Wake Forest incident.  It appears that the changes that we fought for two decades ago at Syracuse, which spread throughout the country due to the publicity that our actions received, had no effect at Wake.  The response of the Wake Forest administration sounded as tone-deaf as what we heard initially from Syracuse.  It appears to me that Wake Forest had no comprehensive program to deal with reports of sexual assault by their students or to education their students, or attempt to prevent such incidents from occurring.

Hopefully there are some bold educated students at Wake (and any other campus) that are willing to stand up and demand changes occur there.  The administration of Wake Forest must be made to understand that the treatment that this one student received (and many countless voiceless others certainly did as well) is not acceptable and does not live up to the principles and goals of the university.  I'm interested to see what, if anything, comes of this and what, if any, changes the university implements either on their own or after being shamed into doing so.