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Laughery: Shine the light on CU's
Office of Discrimination and Harassment
Laughery: Shine the light on CU's Office of Discrimination and Harassment
Ron Laughery
Posted: 02/23/2014 01:00:00 AM MST
We Coloradans love transparency in our public institutions. Take our
sunshine laws — two members of any Colorado government body can't have
coffee together to discuss the affairs of state without breaking the
law. We wanna watch if they're gonna to talk about us. Boulderites'
demand for a clear view into public decision making was obvious during
the recent fuss over the 50-year contract to manage U.S. 36. Even
though the negotiation was conducted within the law, we wanted to see
it and have someone explain to us why it was such a good idea. Good for
us. We expect our public institutions to be accountable to those of us
they are supposed to be serving.
That is, of course, unless it involves charges of sexual harassment or
discrimination at public universities. Then, public officials can make
decisions that ruin peoples' lives with little or no accountability.
Somehow, this part of American society, including our very own
University of Colorado, has decided that, in this case, slanted justice
behind closed doors is okay.
Perhaps the most sensational case was in 2006 at Duke University where
lacrosse players accused of sexual misconduct were suspended, publicly
vilified, and the team's coach fired. Less than a year later, the North
Carolina Attorney General referred to these students as victims of "a
tragic rush to accuse." The recent fiasco between Patty Adler and CU's
Office of Discrimination and Harassment showed another bizarre side of
what can happen when transparency, rules of evidence, and due process
are seen as irrelevant anachronisms needed more by the huddled masses
than the ivory towers. I'm still not sure what to think about the
ogling philosophers at CU, but the fact-free report accusing them of
sexual misconduct seems to be more of the same.
How and why have universities decided to treat harassment and
discrimination charges so differently from what we all expect of
American judicial institutions? One problem seems to be the desire of
colleges to shield people who make accusations of sexual misbehavior.
In most cases, this means shielding a woman accusing a man of sexual
harassment from having to face her accuser, though Adler demonstrated
that this is not a one-way street.
For example, the Guidelines for CU's Office of Discrimination and Harassment states the following:
"In CU-Boulder's process, the complainant and respondent will not be
permitted to directly question each other and are not required to be
present together at any point."
It's hard to see any justice system as fair when the accused cannot ask
questions of the accuser — a simple concept enshrined in the Magna
Carta that has since been a bedrock of our sense of justice. However,
many universities, including ours, somehow see it differently.
Another redefinition of justice that universities, including CU, employ
is reducing the standard of guilt from "beyond a reasonable doubt" to
the far less rigorous "preponderance of the evidence," where the
standard is "more likely to have occurred than not." So, for example,
in a "he said-she said" debate over consent to sex, a man accused of
forcing sex on a woman must prove the sex was more than likely
consensual without him being able to ask her questions in front of a
judge. Good luck.
And, as we learned from the Patty Adler experience, after the judgments
are rendered, the CU Office of Discrimination and Harassment can't tell
us much of anything about what evidence led to their determination of
guilt or innocence. It's a secret.
Based on the embarrassments over the past few months, CU is now
reviewing the policies and procedures of the Office of Discrimination
and Harassment. The first step to redemption is one simple thing -
shining the light on the processes and products of CU's Office of
Discrimination and Harassment. Make CU's legal system as transparent as
the rest of Colorado's legal systems and let there be equal justice for
all, even in the ivory towers.
Email ron@bikeandsail.net.
Original Internet Location:
http://www.dailycamera.com/columnists/ci_25202242/laughery-shine-light-cus-office-discrimination-and-harassment