Rape and Non-rapists

For over two years, Georgi Zedginidze’s reputation has been in limbo. A former Graduate School of Education (GSE) student from the Republic of Georgia, he was arrested for felony sexual assault in January 2002 when his accuser, an aquaintance, alleged that he had pulled her into his room and raped her. A visit to his jail cell in the aftermath by a Harvard official was appropriately curt: withdraw, his visitor told him, or face a worse punishment from the GSE’s version of the Ad Board, the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities, Zedginidze recalled.

When he was acquitted by a Middlesex Superior Court, it seemed that Zedginidze’s ordeal had reached its terminus. He had never completed his education degree, and this—it would follow—was a ripe time to be allowed back in the country and the GSE. But because of Harvard’s unfailingly mediocre judicial boards, Zedginidze’s petition has been sent, as his lawyer has noted, “into a black hole.” He has received no response and will in any case not receive an open hearing of a court’s brand, a procedure unheard of in the Star Chamber of the Ad Board and its ilk. Indeed, the only communication he has had with Harvard’s strong arm has been in the form of an ominous warning: Don’t ask Harvard to clear your name, he says he was told, for the outcome—no matter the conclusion of the outside world—might be against you.

But if Zedginidze’s case sounds like something out of Kafka, with an innocent protagonist nonetheless enduring punishment under a supposedly fair system, the reverse has just as frequently occurred. Convicted sex offenders have routinely received punishments less severe than expulsion from the Ad Board and the Faculty. The most severe case, when admitted rapist D. Drew Douglas was “required to withdraw” by the Ad Board, elicited such widespread campus outrage in 1999 that a meeting of the full Faculty dismissed him outright by a wide margin. Yet this is the exception to the rule — dismissal is a punishment that has only been employed once in nearly two decades. And in any case, dismissal is still a step down from the outright expulsion convicted sex offenders deserve.

A system which allows gentlemanly withdrawal, as Harvard’s Ad Board has for decades, is unacceptable. Then again, there are limits to Harvard’s ability to adjudicate something fairly; the Ad Board is surely not a court — it neither has the kind of transparency or judicial sage that make for worthy bodies of law in external society. That the GSE administration has attempted to bully someone exonerated in a court of law into not applying for readmission represents the dual definitions of “rape” that exist, and Harvard’s rebuke of the more clear-cut one employed in courts.

A more tolerable solution and one more respectful of the rule of law would be allowing the outside world, for once, to give guidance to Harvard. If a student is convicted of felony sexual assault, an automatic expulsion should follow. If the student is exonerated, or the district attorney decides there is not enough evidence to prosecute, the University has an obligation bordering on a civic duty to make the same judgment unless evidence otherwise is presented. Of course, admission (or readmission) to a college is not of the same thread as freedom from incarceration or other punishment. This difference gives Harvard the ability to punish students for offenses that are not illegal (usually under the catch-all definition of “conduct unbecoming of a Harvard student”) but the University certainly lacks the moral legitimacy to define a non-rapist as a rapist.

Ironically, the loudest arguments posed against letting Harvard let the outside world handle matters emanate not from shadowy administrators, but from students themselves. In this instance, well-intentioned individuals such as those of the Coalition Against Sexual Violence (CASV) have argued time and time again against instituting the judicial safeguards that make state courts relatively fair and the Ad Board unfair. CASV has argued, among other things, against a standard of “independent corroborating evidence” to prompt an Ad Board investigation—something former Dean Harry R. Lewis nonetheless instituted—and for a near-absolute victim confidentiality. Massachusetts, as well as a score of other states, have confidentiality statutes where the accuser can keep her identity veiled, but the Ad Board’s version (amenable to CASV) denies the accused the fundamental right to cross-examine the accuser and challenge the evidence permitted. The other differences between Harvard and Massachusetts are the presence of a jury, a standard of evidence determined by lengthy case law and a trained jurist as an arbiter of that evidence. And on all these counts, Massachusetts undeniably has the upper hand in administering fair verdicts. CASV’s insistence on lower standards of evidence and less transparent proceedings—fixtures that invariably lower the fairness of any hearing—should be replaced with a rhetoric that encourages women to go to the police, go to court, and put their assailants behind bars.

In cases both ways, it is time for Harvard to conduct a reality check on the way it deals with sexual assault. Zealotry in prosecuting rape is certainly justifiable, but it should limit itself to one central demand: the University should not offer any modicum of impunity to convicted rapists and sexual offenders. On the other hand, the adherence to a set of University rules in the face of legal exoneration doesn’t do much to punish rapists and does even less to enhance the credibility of an already dubious school discipline system.

Travis R. Kavulla ’06 is a history concentrator in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.