Rules change:
New sexual abuse policies draw fire at Stanford.
New policies that change the way Stanford University investigates sexual harassment allegations — including an apparent omission of attempted rape from the list of offenses — are drawing heated criticism from the campus community.
The rules, required of all colleges by the U.S. Department of Education and set to take effect at Stanford on Friday, also appear to no longer require students to obtain “affirmative consent” before engaging in sexual activity, according to a 47page draft document put forward by the university.
The document outlines formal procedures required of students and administrators in the filing and investigating of sexual harassment complaints. Colleges across the country were ordered last spring by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to revisit their policies.
Proponents say new rules were required to
ensure “due process” for both sides in sexual harassment complaints. Critics say the rules will discourage victims from coming forward. And Stanford officials say the policy reflects what was required of them under the federal mandate.
At Stanford, the new policy sparked heated criticism from victims’ rights advocates.
Stanford law Professor Michele Dauber, a leading advocate for abuse victims’ rights, said the document reaffirms that “Stanford is a most unfriendly place when it comes to sexual assault.”
“Stanford is attempting to return to a time when sexual assault was swept under the rug and victims were left without any hope of seeing perpetrators held accountable,” Dauber said.
Language in the previous campus sexual abuse policy referred to “acts or attempted acts” of sexual misconduct. The new guidelines, she said, refer only to completed acts and make no mention that “affirmative consent” — either verbal or physical — must be given before two parties can engage or continue to engage in sexual acts.
That means, she said, that few victims of attempted rape will come forward and that attempted rapists “get off Scotfree.”
The new rules say complaints will be investigated by “process navigators” hired by the university, that lawyers will be selected by the university and that free legal counseling can be as brief as two hours. It doubles the length of time before a complaint can result in a hearing.
Dauber called the document “sloppy” and took issue with a section of the guidelines that referred to a survivor as someone who “allegedly experienced the alleged conduct.”
“I guess two ‘allegedlys’ make the point better than (saying) women lie about rape,” said Dauber.
The university said it had spent more than three months putting together the new policy. On Thursday, a day before the rules were to become final, the university said in a statement that it was still in the “final stages of reviewing comments” and may not be done making changes.
“While we wish we could offer a longer comment period, we have been working diligently for the past three months with
Stanford staff, students and faculty to draft the new policies and procedures. We have tried to get it right,” said Stanford Provost Persis Drell.
“While we expect that many thoughtful individuals within the Stanford community will not agree with some of the requirements of the federal regulations, they are set by law and cannot be altered,” Drell added.
Among the critics was the editorial board of the student Stanford Daily newspaper, which said in an editorial that DeVos’s “callous treatment of survivors” was a “reflection on the current Trump administration’s dangerous disregard for the severity of sexual violence on college campuses.”
Doctoral student Emma Tsurkov, who was part of an eightstudent advisory committee convened to help Stanford draft its new policy, said the committee recommendations were largely ignored.
“We got used as a prop,” she said. “These guidelines will really hurt survivors and make the process more hostile.”
Dauber, who was active in the successful 2018 recall of Santa Clara Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky after he handed down a sixmonth sentence to Brock Turner, a former Stanford student convicted of sexual assault, complained the new policy “will make students at Stanford less safe from sexual violence.”
“They really rushed out there to do Betsy DeVos’s dirty work,” she said. “It seems they saw this as an opportunity to roll back protections for women and survivors at Stanford.’’