OVERDUE PROCESS

In the spring of 1998, Bates College was in an uproar. Rumors of sexual assault – date rape – were rampant, hundreds of students picketed the home of the college president in protest of what they viewed as a cover-up. In the end, three male students, names unknown, were brought before the college’s conduct committee and, after closed hearings, were expelled.

In the fall of 2002, the University of Maine is in an uproar and headed toward litigation. Two male students, alleged date rapists, were brought before the university’s conduct committee and, after closed hearings, were expelled. Their names, however, are widely known; they are (or were) members of the UMaine varsity football team and their removal from the roster required public explanation.

In addition to the lost anonymity at UMaine, there is another noteworthy difference between these two cases. At Bates, the alleged victims refused to file complaints with local police, making prosecution within the criminal justice system impossible. At UMaine, the alleged victim did file a complaint with local police at the time of the alleged crime last June. An investigation was conducted and the matter was referred to the district attorney’s office, but the case has not been presented to the grand jury and no criminal charges have been filed.

There are many similarities between the two cases, but one is especially noteworthy – the lack of due process afforded the alleged rapists. Such constitutional protections as the right to legal counsel, the right to confront the accuser under oath, the right to examine prosecution evidence and witnesses, the right to present evidence and witnesses for the defense are absent in trial by student-conduct committee. A process devised to address such policy infractions as cheating, plagiarism or failing to observe quiet hours in the dorm is utterly out of its league when used to address crime, especially the violent crime of rape. Similarly, the appeals process available to the UMaine students – a review by three faculty members untrained in the law – is unsuited to the task at hand. The alleged rape may never see a real court of law, but the abrogation of the Bill of Rights certainly will.

Rape is a serious crime and a difficult crime to prosecute. Date rape is especially difficult, since the victim, at least at one point, consented to be in the perpetrator’s company. But if sexual contact was nonconsensual, if any force was used, or even hinted at, if alcohol or any other drug was used to make the victim unable to resist, those accused of this crime should be arrested, put on trial and, if convicted in a court of law after being afforded the protections the Constitution offers, sent to prison. It is a long process, it can be painful for the victim, but it works.

In contrast, consider the results of using a system designed to punish rule-breaking to prosecute violent crime. At Bates, three men who may be rapists were sentenced to having to go to college somewhere else, with their unprosecuted crimes kept a secret from students at their new college. At UMaine, two men who have not been charged with rape are publicly labeled as rapists because they play football and the university’s in-house disciplinary process could not preserve the confidentiality it promises; if they are, in fact, rapists, the victim now gets the added horror of seeing her attackers portrayed as victims in a pending civil suit against the university. The criminal justice system may not be perfect, but at least it does not produce results in which everybody loses.