As the number of serious sexual assaults escalates across universities, experts say female students often do not want to go to the police, fearing delays and traumatising questioning, and knowing only 1% of rape cases end in conviction. Universities say increasing numbers of women are instead turning to them to investigate...
Why would a university ever decide that this is something they should agree to do?
A student conduct panel, often comprising academics, support staff and students, takes evidence from both sides and decides whether a student has broken the rules by committing sexual misconduct and should be suspended or expelled. Universities stress this is not like a court of law.
Of course it isn't. and a court of law is precisely where allegations of wrongdoing snhould be examined and tested. But as Longrider points out, increasingly, that's not the case. Extrajudicial means are sought, even by those who should know better...
Prof Sir Steve West, the vice-chancellor of the University of the West of England and president of Universities UK until earlier this year, said: “As expulsion is a penalty, parents of the accused often start to raise the stakes by hiring a lawyer. It is a power game, because usually the victim has no representation, and I think it is completely unacceptable and unfair.”
No, actually, it's pefectly fair. What you were doing is the unfair approach.
West said that parents “rarely tell us that they’re going to do this in advance”, typically turning up with a lawyer to the final student conduct committee hearing. He worries that this will “drive silence”, with victims frightened of being subjected to exactly the sort of adversarial investigation they wanted to avoid by not complaining to the police.
Unfortunately, there's no avoiding it. Sexual assult almost always takes place in private, so a proper investigation is always going to be adversarial in nature.
Smita Jamdar, a partner at the law firm Shakespeare Martineau who advises universities on sexual assault hearings, said: “There are increasing numbers of students choosing to bring cases of sexual misconduct of all sorts to their university rather than the police, and increasing numbers of very serious allegations.” She added that choking and sadomasochism (S&M) were now “not uncommon”. Jamdar said institutions often brought her firm in because an accused student had hired a lawyer and the university needed support. “Everyone ends up arguing over legal principles that are utterly bamboozling to most student conduct panels,” she said.
Because they aren't the right place or the right people to be handling them.
