KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Colleges that expel students whom they suspect of having committed sexual assault are being asked to go further by specifying the reason for expulsion on their transcripts.
Victims’ advocates say it’s critical to ensuring that such students don’t end up on other campuses without their new schools knowing the potential risk and to holding them accountable, long term, so they can’t just move on with a clean slate.
Virginia and New York already have such a requirement, and a California congresswoman, Rep. Jackie Speier, introduced a bill Thursday that would expand it nationwide while allowing such notations to eventually be expunged. Speier, a Democrat from the Bay Area, said most schools already note incidents of cheating on students’ records, so it makes sense to note if someone was expelled for sexual misconduct.
“Sexual assault is a far more serious offense that deserves at least as much, if not greater, scrutiny,” Speier told The Associated Press in an email last month.
Opponents, though, say such transcript notations would be unfair. They point out that these sexual misconduct findings are made by the schools, not the courts, and that, in many cases, prosecutors have opted not to press charges due to a lack of evidence. Furthermore, schools have a lower bar for determining culpability than the justice system’s standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. Title IX, the federal law prohibiting gender-based discrimination in education, including sexual harassment and sexual violence, requires schools to find an accused student responsible if there’s a better than 50-50 chance a sexual assault occurred.
“It is an uneven playing field from the start,” said Justin Dillon, a Washington-based lawyer who has defended dozens of students accused of sexual misconduct. “Regardless of what colleges want to say, the burden is always on the accused student to prove his innocence, not the other way around.”
The Title IX requirements can expose schools to lawsuits. That’s the case at the University of Kansas, which is being sued by two former members of the women’s rowing team who accuse the school of mishandling their claims against a football player.
