Author:
Dear Editor,
None would disagree that a student *proven* to have assaulted or raped other another student should be expelled, after which the victims should seek further justice in criminal court. Oxy’s actions, in the cited instances where it has *confirmed* the guilt of the accused, are appallingly inadequate. The dean of students who attempted to dissuade students from speaking out should be summarily dismissed. And, as OSAC has noted, a radical revision of existing policies, together with the vigorous enforcement of Title IX, is long overdue.
BUT as a free-speech fundamentalist and civil libertarian, I, and I suspect many alumni like me, wonder how OSAC proposes claims of assault and/or rape should be investigated. What evidence should be required to prove—or disprove—the guilt of the accused? How can school officials, who have no training in criminal investigation, move swiftly and effectively to determine if troubling accusations have any basis in fact? In short, how can we insure that the guilty answer for their crimes while at the same time insuring that due process is observed and the unjustly accused aren’t punished for crimes they didn’t commit?
Asserting that most victims who claim to be raped prove, in the end, to have been raped (“Statistics show that there is no reason to think that s/he is lying about having been abused.” – OSAC ALLIES page); suggesting that friends don’t ask friends for objective proof of serious allegations, but rather accept all such claims on faith “(It might be very difficult for your friend to tell you their experience, so it is essential to their healing process that you believe them.” – OSAC ALLIES page), sets a dangerous precedent.
Obviously, rape is difficult to prove; the victim may have no material evidence or witnesses, and may be too traumatized to provide a clear account of precisely what happened. Our first impulse, when those we love say they’ve been violated in the most violent, scarring way imaginable, is to accept their account of events and help them heal and find justice. But a rush to help shouldn’t be a rush to judgment.
Some of the accounts posted under SURVIVOR STORIES on the OSAC website mention being “blackout drunk” when the alleged events occurred; how can we know that the alleged victim’s memory is reliable? (Let me be clear: this is not “victim-blaming”; the horror of the crimes alleged shouldn’t prevent us from thinking critically about the charges leveled.)
Moreover, in the OSAC press conference with Gloria Allred, one young woman said she’d been raped but didn’t even know it until a year later, when a friend at a more enlightened school (I’m quoting from memory) made her see the light. How can one not know one is being raped, unless we’re defining rape, here, as something other than non-consensual penetrative sex? Are we? If so, that, too, would be helpful to know, given the fog of war surrounding OSAC’s allegations of a “sexual assault epidemic” at Oxy.
Lobbying for a system where the accused are presumed guilty until proven innocent because, well, the presumption of an “sexual assault epidemic” at Oxy makes it more likely than not that the accused is guilty, and furthermore “statistics show that there is no reason to think that [the accuser] is lying about having been abused,” is irresponsible in the extreme and, potentially corrosive to any sense of community at Oxy.
Most important, the mindset implicit in the approach suggested on OSAC’s ALLIES page is contrary to the core values Oxy and other liberal-arts schools attempt to instill, among them the conviction that we live in a fact-based reality, not a faith-based one, and the belief that justice for victims shouldn’t be purchased at the cost of the rights of the accused.
-Svetlana Bosch
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