…is the question raised by the ongoing situation at the University of Iowa. The first thing to say is that I have absolutely no idea what did or did not happen there. Nor, apparently, does anyone else – the related search warrants have just been resealed for the fourth time and the university isn’t saying anything. The local paper, the Iowa Press Citizen, has just filed a new motion in their ongoing suit to get the university to release information about their investigation and to get the warrants unsealed.

“What happened at Hillcrest Hall seven months ago and what public officials have done since is a public issue,” Press-Citizen said managing editor Jim Lewers. “We Iowans — the people who own and fund the University of Iowa — deserve to know about student safety, the athletic department and accountability and openness. It’s absurd that we can’t even find out how many pages of documents the university is denying us access to.”

I wholeheartedly support their demands for redacted (meaning all personal information has been removed) documents that demonstrate how the university handled the case.

Such a request is sensitive to the admitted difficulties of balancing students’ right to privacy with other students’ right to know, balancing the needs of the investigation with the safety of students (and others) who may be endangered by suspects still at large. Particularly in cases of sexual assault, which usually involve two students, administrators are torn between two sets of legal obligations – the Clery Act, which mandates (among other things) that students must be warned about violent crimes that take place on campus if the perpetrator has not been apprehended and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which mandates that most student information be kept confidential. There can be a conflict in meeting both requirements, but I cannot see why redacted documents that demonstrate a thorough and fair process of investigation would not meet FERPA.

What the struggle really is at Iowa is hard to know. There is no question that claims of “student privacy” have been used at other institutions to cover-up inadequate responses to sexual assault. Many of you may recall that the limitations of a student’s right to privacy is a big (and very much on-going) debate in the wake of the Virginia Tech killings, and universities need to continue to ask at what point protecting the privacy of one student threatens the safety of other students. The Virginia Tech case started with the sexual harassment of another student, and an adequate intervention there may have prevented a tragedy. On the other hand, schools should certainly not broadcast private information without good reason.

There are no easy answers here, but it is an arena where, time and time again, we have seen the tendency to show more concern for the possible embarrassment of the troubled or entitled (or athletically endowed) student with a history of sexual inappropriateness or violence than for the danger to his potential victims. That said, we absolutely believe universities have an obligation to investigate allegations before making decisions about a student’s status. In this case, the university’s continued refusal to provide any information (particularly given that, at least according to the investigation of the Daily Iowan, some of the students involved have left the school), seems increasingly suspect. If students were found guilty of violating school policy, that information is part of their public record (although the details are not). If not, were they forced out of school without the school fully following its own judicial process? That would also be of concern. A major factor impacting the Press-Citizen’s skepticism is that the university apparently has been accused of mishandling cases involving athletes before. I find assurances that “much has changed since then” a little thin without evidence.

Clarity and openness bring respect for a university and its procedures. For the sake of both the accuser and the accused, I think evidence of the process with names and personal information redacted is not only appropriate but necessary for a school to provide. Too much silence, and a refusal to provide even process information, and people begin to wonder about what’s being covered up. We’ve seen recent concern about this at Tulane as well as the University of Iowa, and I think administrators need to listen to what students are saying. Tell us what you are doing and why and how that keeps us safe. Our interest is not prurient – we need to know how safe we are on our own campuses and only those charged with keeping the campus safe can tell us that.