Absolutely heartbreaking news out of Stanford

[Keeperkat]

I'm anxiously awaiting the day when a male student at Stanford or other elite university is accused of sexual assault of a female student and he gets an in-person meeting from a sweet, kind-hearted counselor at the dean's office saying, "we're here to support you through this, and don't worry it won't be the end of your career at Stanford." That will never happen. This would be required by the rule that Ms. Meyer's parents are insisting on. So the absurdity of it indicates to me that they think their daughter was innocent (based on info we aren't privy to, so maybe she was) but that any football players accused of sexual assault get the other rule where they aren't treated with kid gloves, but get the boot first and asked questions later.

No need for you to be anxiously awaiting.....

Apparently a complaint of sexual assault by a male student of an underage female does not warrant the same rigorous 6 month investigation and disciplinary hearing that spilled coffee by a female student warrants.

"The lawsuit says Stanford failed to initiate any meaningful Title IX or OCS disciplinary process for the football player even though the school was required to dismiss the player from the team under its own policies pledging zero tolerance for sexual violence."

Stanford's response: "In fact, it is the university that initially reported this claim to Stanford’s Title IX office and the police. However, the Title IX office did not pursue the matter since the criteria for moving forward with an investigation were not met."

Interestingly and per Title IX updated May 2020 "All federally funded universities and colleges are responsible for complying with Title IX. One stipulation of the law is that all higher ed schools must investigate any report of a gender-based incident." So the question is, why didn't they investigate the alledged sexual assault incident?

 

[Orangeteam]

The OCS at Stanford has a process for when to communicate with students about alleged student violations.
They state that the OCS should refrain from communicating at certain times to ensure the messaging does not impact the student's academics and mental state. This implies Standford understands the timing vs. potential impacts

There have been 20 years of University led studies with HR groups that advise against communicating strong messaging on Mon, Fridays, afterhours, etc. The goal being reducing opportunites for workplace violence, and any impacts to both remaining employees and the impacted employee mental health.

https://studentjusticeproject.com/ highlights a 10+ year ongoing issue with the whole process. I believe there were even recommendations given to to Standford back in '11 or '12 on how to fix it. They changed the name to from Office of Judicial Affairs to Offcice of Community Standards and that was about it.

I imagine the history of the OCS and even the current process to delay communications will be where the lawyers spend a lot of time.