Is there any justice in campus courts?

Critics say secretive university tribunals are not equipped to deal with violent crime

BY DANA HAWKINS

Beyond honor codes · Under wraps

Up until the moment she got the phone call from the university official, Joanie Giuliani was convinced that the campus court would decide in her favor. A few weeks earlier, the Michigan Technological University junior had filed rape charges against another student through the school's judicial system. University officials had advised her to let them handle the case and had assured her, she says, that her alleged attacker, an athlete, would be punished. But when the phone rang, the official read her a letter stating there was not enough evidence to prosecute. "They give you the impression it's all going to go your way so you'll try it through their system," says Giuliani. "But all they really care about is protecting their reputation, and the athletes who bring in money for the school."

Campus tribunals, which exist in some form at nearly every university in the nation, have stepped beyond adjudicating charges of cheating and plagiarism and are now commonly investigating rapes, assaults, and other serious crimes. Advocates of the judicial boards say they provide students with swift, private resolutions and offer an alternate route to justice for victims of date rape and other assaults whose cases might not meet the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of guilt required by criminal courts.

But a growing number of critics say the university judicial system suffers from three basic flaws. First, campus police, often untrained in the techniques of criminal investigations, frequently mishandle evidence and witness interviews. This can compromise a victim's chances for justice in the criminal courts. Second, the harshest sentence the tribunals can impose is expulsion, which is too mild a punishment for violent crimes. Third, the protections granted in a court of law, collectively known as due process, frequently are absent from university proceedings. As a result, both victims and suspects often come away from a campus trial unsatisfied. "The system is not at all equipped to deal with serious crimes," says S. Daniel Carter, vice president of Security on Campus Inc., based in King of Prussia, Pa.

Beyond honor codes. College tribunals primarily enforced academic honor codes until the 1960s and 1970s, when they began accepting cases dealing with underage drinking and other types of youthful misbehavior. It wasn't until the early 1980s–when the college courts began to handle more serious crimes–that they came under scrutiny. Edward Golden, the assistant dean of students at the University of Virginia, conducted a study in 1980 of disciplinary procedures at 58 institutions that showed that many were ignoring due process. He found that 36 percent did not allow cross-examination during proceedings, 55 percent did not guarantee the student an impartial judge or jury, 60 percent did not guarantee students the right to confront their accusers, and 91 percent did not compel witnesses to an alleged crime to testify.

And the courts have not improved in the past decade, say Harvey Silverglate and Alan Charles Kors, authors of the recently published Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses. The two spent eight years studying the judicial systems of several hundred American universities. "None of them had a procedure that by any stretch of the imagination could be called fair," says Silverglate. He and Kors found schools where students are even forbidden from discussing their own case publicly. Other campus tribunals bar attorneys, even though a student's testimony can be used later in a criminal trial.

Donald Gehring, the founder and past president of the Association for Student Judicial Affairs, supports college courts. He says they make campuses safer places by swiftly and privately meting out justice in sensitive cases such as date rape, which victims might not otherwise pursue. Gehring contends the courts meet their dual goals of protecting students while educating campus communities. "Even in cases involving violent acts," he says, "suspending someone can be educational."

Law enforcement officials say they increasingly find themselves at odds with university officials over the reach of campus courts. The county prosecutor's criminal division in Dayton, Ohio, is embroiled in a dispute with the University of Dayton about whether campus police and officials should report difficult-to-prove claims of date rape to the prosecutor's office. An Ohio prosecutor familiar with the situation says local law enforcement–not campus police and administrators–should be evaluating whether there is sufficient evidence to prosecute a claim. In some cases, campus officials may be too quick to dismiss a claim as unprovable. The Dayton campus police say they haven't always reported allegations when the victims chose not to file suit. "The philosophy and policy here is the victim drives the car," says John Delamer, the director of public safety at UD.

Under wraps. University court opponents point out that with prospective students and their parents concerned about crime on campus, schools have an incentive to handle cases internally. Although universities are required by law to make public all crimes reported to campus police, rarely does anyone hear about crimes handled by university tribunals. At most schools, the system operates in absolute secrecy. Universities typically don't disclose the type of crimes adjudicated, the students involved, the number of cases deliberated, or the decisions reached. At the University of Mississippi, a veil of silence covered proceedings against members of the Sigma Chi fraternity after a pledge, Dudley Moore, hanged himself last October. Prior to the suicide, the fraternity was under scrutiny for harassing Moore and other pledges. Judicial inquiry teams, which included some Sigma Chi members, forbade campus police from testifying. Randall Corban, the captain of investigative services with the university police, remains disturbed by the outcome. "I can't tell you the verdict, but I don't think it was as severe as it should have been."

Because the system operates in secrecy, there are frequent charges that the courts favor athletes, fraternity members, and students whose parents are influential or generous contributors. For instance, last year a University of Virginia tribunal expelled Richard Wallace Smith, the son of Federal Express founder Frederick W. Smith, after he pleaded guilty in a criminal court to charges in connection with a 1997 assault on another student. But when later university proceedings resulted in a lesser sentence, students rallied to protest what was viewed as preferential treatment of Smith. His sentence was subsequently stiffened to a two-year suspension. One of Smith's attorneys says the court initially judged her client more harshly because of his father's prominence.

Experts say the case illustrates a crucial weakness of the tribunals. "The key lesson here is that the campus court system collapses under any significant challenge," says Daniel Carter. "Parents would be a lot more disturbed about school crime if they knew how slipshod these proceedings can be." His group, along with student newspapers across the country, has been at the forefront of efforts to open up the courts.

Their efforts may be starting to pay off. Congress repealed a federal privacy law last October that colleges claimed prohibited them from disclosing the outcomes of disciplinary proceedings. The new law doesn't require schools to release the information, but it is causing many institutions, including Michigan Tech and the University of Dayton, to re-examine their secrecy codes. Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, urges students to learn as much as they can about a prospective school's judicial system, including whether it adjudicates violent crimes and is at least considering releasing trial results. If the school takes a vow of silence on the subject, Goodman advises, that ought to be a deal breaker.