In a much needed response to the debacle at the University of Iowa, new sexual assault policies have been adopted for all of the state universities in Iowa. They generally look pretty good from what I could find in articles on the new policies and in this draft report from the consultants hired to write the new policy – the new policy is not up on Iowa’s website yet so I can’t do a full analysis.

What I’m disappointed about is that I see little evidence of student involvement with developing these policies, aside from one mention of “student focus groups” in the consultants’ report (and it seems from the context that they may mean focus groups done at some point with students somewhere). Somewhat ironically, the consultants are now urging the university to inundate students with information about the new policy, “like a high-profile political campaign.” Wouldn’t it have been nice if they had taken a page from the most recent successful presidential campaign and spent time talking to their constituents, getting their input, and involving them in the process before making all of the policy decisions?

Still, it has got to be better than what they had, and as the President of the Board of Regents (the governing body which approved the new policies) said,

“These are living policies,” Miles said. “We won’t just stamp them and freeze them now.”

I see an invitation to students here…

This is pretty great news.

The President of U of Iowa has actually apologized for the school’s mishandling of a gang rape case.

Sally Mason, the university’s president, met today with Iowa’s Board of Regents and apologized for the university’s handling of the alleged 2007 assault on a female student by two Iowa football players.

“Failing a student who asks for our help is unacceptable,” Ms. Mason said, according to the Associated Press. “Failing to be transparent and accountable to the Board of Regents and ultimately the people of Iowa is also unacceptable.”

Ms. Mason apologized to the alleged victim and her family for the university’s response. University officials followed established rules, she said, but those policies were flawed. The regents issued a resolution today directing Iowa’s public universities to conduct a comprehensive review of their procedures related to sexual assault.

It’s too bad that it took such a tragedy to get here, but honestly I’ve seen schools respond to equally tragic circumstances with far less sensitivity and openness. The fact that U of Iowa is admitting that it made a big mistake is a good sign. The fact that they’re reviewing their procedures is an even better one.

It’s a long time coming, but The University of Iowa has finally done something right.

The University has fired two of its Vice Presidents in response to their terrible handling of a gang rape case.

It’s rare to see a college take this kind of action. I hope it’s a sign the U of Iowa is going to turn itself around and start addressing sexual violence as it should.

Oh, University of Iowa…

Nora has made many posts about the U of I story where in October of 2007, a female student made sexual assault allegations about two football players. It was first investigated by, get this- the football coach. And after, there was no report made to campus security by the athletics department they investigated it thoroughly. Question: Since when are athletic departments capable of investigating a sexual assault committed by their very players? Ugh.

Well, things don’t seem to be getting any better. In a recent article from the Chicago Tribune it was revealed that the number of sexual assaults and harassment reports are increasing at the University. However, nothing seems to be happening after they are reported. Officials from the U of I are quoted stating that the students who come forward about a experiencing a sexual assault typically opt for an informal process. Well, duh. Who wants to be in the spotlight after dealing with a traumatic sexual assault? I don’t understand why choosing to take a less formal route means that those taking the report don’t have to take it seriously. There is a way to conduct an investigation while keeping it as professional and informal as possible. Also, the U of I has a Women’s Resource and Action Center and a Rape Crisis Advocacy Program, so they seem to be fully equipped with resources for women or men seeking help dealing with such a traumatic experience if they are having trouble coming out publicly about he incident.

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A letter that the survivor’s mother wrote to the university back in November gives detailed evidence that the University of Iowa badly mistreated the survivor in addition to badly mishandling the case itself. The mother released the letter to the press this week, I assume in frustration over claims that the university had handled the case appropriately (that evaluation was made by the university’s Regents, who were not provided a copy of the November letter and who did not speak to the survivor or her family in making that determination – the Governor is calling for a further investigation.) I wish I could say that any of the allegations were surprising to me, but we hear things like this far too often. A sampling:

The alleged victim first learned from police that she was sexually assaulted by two perpetrators instead of one after Nov. 5, 2007, according to the letter. The athletic department knew this the first week after the incident but kept that from the victim and her father, according to the letter.

“They were aggressive and forceful in their interviewing tactics and accusatory in their stance. She told me afterwards, while crying, that they basically accused her of bringing this upon herself. She was interviewed with the intention of making her feel that she caused this. …

“Her friends were called in as well, not having any idea what they were being called in for, and without the mention, again, of the right to an advocate, and they also left crying feeling as if they had committed some kind of crime by being associated with the victim and this situation,” according to the letter.

The alleged victim was not advised to retain a victim advocate, the letter stated. She did not have a victim advocate for 3½ weeks after the alleged assault.

Carla Miller at the Rape Victim Advocacy Program, which serves students and non-students, said normally a sexual assault victim should have an advocate “immediately” and UI athletic department officials know a victim should have an advocate.

“(A victim) shouldn’t have to go (to the equal opportunity office) alone. She shouldn’t have to do anything alone. By Iowa law, she has a right to a victim advocate,” Miller said.

Those five officials encouraged the alleged victim to follow an “informal” process, according to the letter.

“They were told that if the victim chose to go with an informal action the athletic department would act swiftly and effectively. If she chose to go formally, which was explained as an in-house process but going outside of the athletic department, she would be looking at a long, arduous process. … She was really encouraged to try the informal route first,” the alleged victim’s mother wrote.

No one at UI seemed to be directing the process, the alleged victim’s mother said in a phone interview.

I hope the students at Iowa are mobilizing to demand something better when they return to campus this fall.

I wrote earlier about attempts to get access to information on how the University of Iowa had handled an alleged rape on their campus. The two suspects have been arrested and, as a result, the search warrants have been unsealed. The information contained in those, plus the report issued by the Regents for the university, suggest that the Press-Citizen was right to be concerned.

Biggest alarm bell? The crime was first investigated by the football coach – which apparently qualifies as correctly following the university’s sexual assault policy! Thankfully, the Regents seem to have recognized the need for a change to this policy. According to the local tv station,

Head coach Kirk Ferentz told us in January that he knew about the alleged attack and investigated it shortly thereafter. After reviewing the case, the Board of Regents is now recommending that all departments, including the department of Athletics, should not be delegated any direct involvement in the investigation of future allegations of sexual assault that arise out of their department.

Instead, the Regents suggest the investigation should be conducted by a single office, eliminating the potential for conflicts of interest and the appearance of impropriety.

There’s a lot of other not acceptable stuff – a football teammate may have, intentionally or not, destroyed evidence, possibly, or not, with the tacit encouragement of the coach; at least one teammate, and possibly others, suspected a sexual assault was occurring and did nothing to stop it and/or did not report it afterwards; the athletic department did not report the sexual assault to the university police when they learned about it; and, oh right, did I mention that the athletic department and possibly other university officials knew about the assault for three weeks before the survivor went to the police – and only then was the crime scene sealed!

The scariest part is that, apparently, everyone on staff correctly followed procedure. Glad the Regents are calling for a new one…

…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.

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A lecture at Illinois State University, a month of events and t-shirts that read “Consent is Sexy, Did you ask?” at Bowling Green, and a month of events including a new coffee shop display project at the University of Iowa.

Kudos to the Daily Vidette for the second great article on sexual assault prevention in two weeks and for my favorite quote:

[Todd Denny, the well-known lecturer] also noted that the most effective form of sexual assault prevention on campus is discussing the attitudes, beliefs and behaviors of students.

Great projects by these student organizers! I’m excited to bring you more about student campaigns as we go through the month. Feel free to email us about your project, and please respond to Peg’s post thinking about how we can continue the creativity and commitment of April all year long.