How one college handled a sexual assault complaint

New York Times 18 July 2014

A New York Times examination of a case, based in part on hundreds of pages of disciplinary proceedings – usually confidential under federal privacy laws – offers a rare look inside one college’s adjudication of a rape complaint amid a roiling national debate over how best to stop sexual assaults on campuses, writes Walt Bogdanich.

Whatever precisely happened that last September night on the campus of Hobart and William Smith Colleges in central New York, the internal records, along with interviews with students, sexual assault experts and college officials, depict a school ill prepared to evaluate an allegation so serious that, if proved in a court of law, it would be a felony with a likely prison sentence.

As the case illustrates, school disciplinary panels are a world unto themselves, operating in secret with scant accountability and limited protection for the accuser or the accused.
Full report on The New York Times site

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