Pop quiz: should you tell the police if you think someone is responsible for a pattern of sexual assaults?Well, that ain't how they do things down Oklahoma State way.In the past, I've made the point that universities shouldn't be adjudicating sexual assault claims. Both because they're bad at it and because they can't actually take these people off the streets.Now, Oklahoma State has provided an object lesson, by showing how much can go wrong when you let a bunch of amateur investigators pretend to do the jobs of police and courts.Consider what happened at Oklahoma State after five different students reported sexual assaults by the same alleged perpetrator.You would assume that a disciplinary committee at an institution faced with multiple reports of sexual assault by one person might say to themselves, "Gee, the training video we watched didn't really prepare us to do the proper investigation of sexual assault at this scale, so maybe we ought to call police."Surely a bunch of amateurs, with no authority to subpoena, no ability to collect or test forensics--certainly they wouldn't attempt to identify and punish a possible serial attacker, would they?
Tag: FOI
Memphis journalist and College Press Freedom Award winner tells her story
Saturday afternoon the SPLC had the privilege of honoring The Daily Helmsman and its editor-in-chief, Chelsea Boozer, who are this year's College Press Freedom Award winners.Over the last few months, Boozer and Helmsman managing editor Christopher Whitten endured repeated harassment by campus police at the University of Memphis for the paper's reporting about campus rapes and their criticism of the police department's failure to notify students in a timely manner.Then, the paper successfully fought back an attempt by a student fee committee to cut the paper's budget by 33 percent — disproportionate with cuts to student organizations, and in response to some committee members' dislike of the paper's coverage.
LSU attorney tells presidential search committee to avoid creating public records
We were more than a little alarmed when we saw this story yesterday, about a search for the new president of the Louisiana State University system.
How college newspapers covered the annual Clery campus safety report
Most college students understand the level of safety on their campus, but sometimes they can get a little too comfortable.A much needed reminder of campus safety comes this week, as this past Monday was the deadline for colleges to release their annual crime report, as required by the Jeanne Clery Act. All colleges that except federal money, which includes almost all public and private colleges that accept federal financial aid, are required to release this report that chronicles the last three years’ worth of serious crime by category. The act is named after a Lehigh University student who was raped and murdered in her dorm room.
SPJ approves resolution supporting legal efforts to end FERPA
The Society of Professional Journalists is formally supporting legal efforts to bring an end to FERPA, the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act, following a resolution passed last week.The resolution, which passed unanimously at the group’s annual convention, encourages the news media legal community to find a strong case to challenge the constitutionality of FERPA under the Supreme Court’s “Obamacare” ruling.The 1974 law requires schools to keep “educational records” private or risk losing federal funding, something that has never happened in the 38 years the law has been in place.
Now that we know FERPA is unconstitutional, what do we do about it?
In today's Inside Higher Ed, I make the case for why the federal student privacy law, FERPA, almost certainly will be struck down as unconstitutional if challenged.The law's requirements -- that a school or college enforce the confidentiality of "education records" or forfeit every dollar of federal education money -- are so coercive that they flunk the standard set by the U.S.
Florida colleges ask court to revisit FERPA case involving student who complained about professor
More than two dozen Florida colleges and universities have filed a brief in support of a Florida college’s appeal after it was ordered to turn over an email from a student about a professor.After his contract wasn’t renewed in 2009, Darnell Rhea, a former adjunct professor at Santa Fe College, asked to see an email between a former student and one of his supervisors concerning his conduct.
N.C. Supreme Court will consider case involving private campus police records
The North Carolina Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case regarding campus police records at private schools, an important victory for the Elon University graduate and former student journalist.In June, the N.C.
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: Education Department allows access to records of employee tuition waivers
The cost of tuition has never been a hotter discussion topic. With the sticker price of a year's undergraduate education at a private university topping $28,500 a year -- and the average student graduating with more than $25,000 in loan debt -- serious questions are being raised about whether college is a sound financial investment.Because tuition costs are pinching family budgets so uncomfortably, the public is doubly outraged when it comes to light that well-connected insiders are getting a free ride -- at a cost that inevitably ends up being passed along to the paying customers.In recent years, journalists have brought to light questionable VIP tuition waiver programs in Illinois, where the governor and legislature just abolished a widely abused system of legislator-dispensed scholarships, and in Tennessee, where student government officers at the University of Memphis have benefited for years from free tuition covered by other students' activity fees.The latest free-ride program facing scrutiny is in Rhode Island, where an exceptionally generous perk waives tuition not just for college and university employees, but for their spouses and children as well.
Penn State’s stained reputation can be cleansed only by sunshine
Now that Joe Paterno's statue has been hauled away and dozens of his gridiron victories erased from the books, crippling NCAA fines imposed and football's Nittany Lions reduced to housecats, it's tempting to close the book on Penn State and declare "problem solved."We shouldn't.In the wake of Louis Freeh’s damning postmortem on Penn State’s non-response to the presence of a known pedophile on campus, seeing the university buried under sanctions was emotionally cathartic.