Beyond the Ad Board

At its meeting tomorrow, the Faculty is scheduled to reopen discussion on how the College should handle peer disputes, including sexual assault cases. Two weeks ago, at a meeting at which several professors rightly complained of the absence of any explicit reference to sexual assault on the official agenda, the Faculty approved a proposal to introduce an additional filter into the Administrative Board’s investigative process. The new policy states that the Ad Board will direct students who are unable to present “corroborating evidence” of their allegations to the criminal courts instead of immediately launching a full investigation. Instead of shirking its responsibility to enforce Harvard’s community standards, the College must create a separate disciplinary board capable of dealing with all allegations of sexual assault and improve resources for rape victims.

The Ad Board is not equipped to deal with allegations of sexual assault, and it is refreshing to hear the administration admit that its process was flawed. But in order to remedy the situation, the College must create a new disciplinary board that does not replicate the existing Ad Board’s many weaknesses. The administrators who are qualified to grant extensions to add/drop deadlines and approve advanced standing petitions do not necessarily have the appropriate skills to handle cases of sexual assault; members of a new board responsible for such cases must be thoroughly trained. The ability to understand and evaluate the complexities of evidence in sexual assault cases, including the relative value of testimonies and medical evidence (including rape kits), is essential to making responsible decisions in these cases and cannot be done properly without training.

The specially-trained board—although sharing the current Ad Board’s prerogatives regarding punishment—would require special procedural safeguards reflecting the delicate nature of the cases it examined, including confidentiality throughout the proceedings and separate advocates for each party to avoid conflicts of interest. In designing the new board, experts from rape resource centers and other groups familiar with the complexities of rape cases must be consulted and their advice heeded. A new board should also protect students’ legitimate expectations of a fair process, one of the greatest flaws of the current Ad Board.

When sexual assault victims demand an investigation, the College is obligated to conduct one. Requiring sexual assault victims to virtually prove their cases before a disciplinary board will even begin an investigation mocks any reasonable notion of fair procedure. A board with better training should be able to resolve more cases, but at least it will provide sexual assault victims with their right to an investigation. Such investigations often lead to evidence or testimony that was not available at the outset, and they send the message to potential rapists that they cannot commit violent crimes and then go back to life as usual.

In addition to ensuring a fair disciplinary process, the College must do more to meet the immediate needs of rape victims. Currently, there is no single central hotline to call or building to go to where rape survivors can receive comprehensive guidance in the aftermath of sexual assault. Many students are unaware of the need to collect physical evidence, when it is available, and University Health Services currently lacks the resources and staff training to do so. The College must correct all of these deficiencies so that sexual assault victims get the support they need.

Although the College should be honest about its inability to reach adequate conclusions in many cases and should advise rape victims of the advantages of the criminal courts, the choice of which process to pursue must remain in the hands of sexual assault victims themselves. When they choose to pursue cases in the criminal courts, the College should accept that decision and discipline convicted rapists. Sexual assault victims should not, however, be forced to wait, often for years, for the criminal courts to issue a verdict before they can live safely in their dorms. The College must provide a trained, competent disciplinary board with the power to remove rapists from the Harvard community.

Dissent: Try Suspected Rapists in Court

Rape is one of the most heinous crimes short of murder. It is therefore imperative that students accused of rape are tried in a criminal court and not in a pseudo-legal rape tribunal at Harvard University.

Trials in criminal courts are conducted openly and according to predetermined guidelines, unlike the murky deliberations of the Ad Board. State prosecutors have a far greater power to requisition both physical evidence and personal testimony than any private institution. Most importantly, judges have the ability to put rapists in jail, a clear and strong punishment that not only deters future rapists but also helps foil repeat offenders.

It would be ludicrous for the Ad Board to try a suspected murderer, and we applaud the administration for realizing that it is also ridiculous for a Harvard board to try a suspected rapist.

—Katherine M. Dimengo ’05, Blake Jennelle ’04, Nicholas F. M. Josefowitz ’05 and Andrew P. Winerman ’04