Letter to the editor: Administration shows double-standard with lack of punishment

After having read the article about a University employee charged with raping his 20-year old daughter and him still employed, I was angry.  Not angry that he is employed after being charged, no. He is innocent until proven guilty. I’m upset with the University and its staff sending a conflicting statement to students.

I sat as the Student Rights Chair for Student Senate this year. During that time, Dr. Jane Tuttle and Nick Kehrwald, Assistant Vice Provost of Student Affairs and the Student Conduct Officer, respectively, presented the committee with proposed changes to the Student Code of Rights and Responsibilities. There was one proposed change that would give the University broad powers to hold students accountable for crimes committed off-campus. This would include actions that could be charged as felonies, most notably, rape or sexual assault of another student. Rights killed this proposal. Federal law already requires action in the case of rape and some members felt that the broad powers wanted were too much.

At present time, the Office of Civil Rights requires that the University take action if a student is accused of sexually abusing or raping another student. That’s right, a student only has to be accused of such crimes to be pulled out of class. Yet, so it seems, a University personnel actually has to be proven guilty. We call that double standards.

It is absolutely astounding to me that the Office of Student Affairs would bring this up for approval by students in two consecutive years, yet there is no such policy in place for KU employees. The point of the proposed change was to protect students that have been raped or sexually assaulted. It was to ensure they would not have to see their charged attacker in class. 

This man, supposedly, raped his 20-year old daughter, a woman the same age as many of the women that the Office of Student Affairs, and the University as a whole, wishes to protect. How can we hold students to a higher standard of conduct than University personnel? Administrators would like to keep a student from class for rape charges, but the same would not hold true for a professor? This seems just a bit off. The University desperately needs to rewrite its personnel policies before getting involved in the off-campus actions of its students.

Aaron Harris is a senior majoring in journalism and history

By
  • Updated May. 8, 2012 at 3:21 pm
  • Calvin

    I guess one size doesn’t fit all. In the real world a person is considered to be innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Until that happens a business is playing with fire if they terminate said employee. The catch is a company policy that can get around a need for a conviction like a moral turpitude clause. A business with a alleged perp and alleged vic could separate the two or suspend one indefinitely until the legal system has run its course. The rights of the victim are protected, the rights of the accused are protected, and the business has some protection. It sounds like the student in their desire to get the bad guy have gone too far with their rules. If a rape did occur then we can all sit around and say “good job” to each other but what if a person is found to be not guilty? How do you make it up to them if they lose their student loans, their classes, their reputations, and the time that they could have (should have) been in class?

    You may not like hearing this but maybe the students should back off on their zeal for punishment until after there is a conviction. Anything else can be conducted on a case by case decision.

  • Aaron

    Calvin

    I usually wouldn’t get on to respond, but I wanted to clear something up for you. The students REFUSED to let that pass into our Code of Rights and Responsibilities. However, federal law and the OCR already require the administration to remove a student if there is a preponderance of doubt that the student committed the crime. 51% sure, that’s all it takes. It’s not the students that need to back off on their zeal but the administration. I thought I made that clear in my letter, but I apparently did not. My apologies for any confusion; the administration, not students wanted this rule, and they did not get it put in. They will probably try again next year.

  • CIavin

    Aaron, no apologies should be given to Calvin.

    If he could, Calvin would have expounded some statistic about how the majority of women lie about rape and that men are constantly oppressed under a sexist legal system that favors women over men. (He would have thrown out some statistic about how most custody battles end with the women with sole custody. It would have somehow, in his distorted, ideological victim blaming made sense. Then he would have told you to look up stats yourself and not provide any evidence for his claims. And when you found the stats, he would conveniently leave out that the vast majority of custody cases end in results that both parties agree upon. But you see, facts are a technicality left best unaddressed by moral cavemen).

    In fact, Calvin was pretty restrained from the normal manner he deals with commenting on the Kansan in this instance. He was either distracted by a youtube video of Ann Culter expounding hateful words about Muslims or was chowing down on his two orders of the 12 piece taco box from Taco Bell and drinking haterade.