Contact: Rebecca Stewart
Telephone: 513-479-3335
Email: info@saveservices.org
25 Worst Colleges for Campus Due Process
WASHINGTON / November 7, 2019 – Today SAVE, a leading campus due process organization, is releasing a list of the 25 worst colleges and university for campus fairness and due process. The colleges were selected based on a detailed review of dozens of lawsuits by students accused of sexual assault, and subsequently expelled or suspended by their university, in which the judge later issued a ruling at least partly favorable to the student (1).
The lawsuits feature a jarring range of due process violations such as a 7-hour hearing; judge-jury-executioner style investigations; exclusion of exculpatory evidence; public defamations; a made-up confession; failure to consider previous false allegations by the accuser; reliance on a flawed ‘affirmative consent’ standard; a fabricated tape recording; a victim treated as a perpetrator; and a case in which the supposed “victim” repeatedly insisted she was not a victim.
The lawsuits call to mind the guilt-presuming methods featured in Franz Kafka’s novel, The Trial, the corrupt show trials exposed in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, and recent satires in which campus disciplinary committees are derided as “Kangaroo Courts.”
Following are the 25 colleges identified with deficient campus procedures:
- California: University of California-Santa Barbara and University of Southern California, Los Angeles
- Colorado: Colorado State University, Pueblo
- Connecticut: Quinnipiac University, Hamden and Yale University, New Haven
- District of Columbia: George Washington University, Washington, DC
- Florida: University of Miami
- Georgia: Georgia Tech University, Atlanta
- Indiana: Purdue University, West Lafayette
- Massachusetts: Brandeis University, Waltham; Amherst College; and Boston College, Newton
- Michigan: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
- Mississippi: University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg
- New York: Columbia University, New York
- Ohio: University of Cincinnati
- Oregon: University of Oregon, Eugene
- Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University, Centre County
- Rhode Island: Brown University, Providence
- South Dakota: Augustana University, Sioux Falls
- Tennessee: Rhodes College, Memphis; University of Tennessee-Knoxville
- Texas: University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, Dallas
- Virginia: James Madison University, Harrisonburg
- Vermont: Middlebury College
Descriptions of each of the lawsuits, including links to the judicial opinions, are available online (2). SAVE urges students considering attendance at these colleges to identify other institutions with a record of respect for constitutionally rooted due process measures.
The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is expected to issue new Title IX regulations that will strengthen due process protections on college campuses (3).
Citations:
- http://www.saveservices.org/sexual-assault/complaints-and-lawsuits/lawsuit-analysis/
- http://www.saveservices.org/sexual-assault/restore-fairness/25-worst-colleges-for-campus-due-process/
- https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eoDetails?rrid=129772
Stop Abusive and Violent Environments is working for evidence-based solutions to domestic violence and sexual assault: www.saveservices.org