Oh-oh…
The University of North Carolina is charging a student with an honor code violation because she did not acquiesce in a student Honor Court’s decision to dismiss a complaint of rape she filed against another student. The charge against her reads…
You are being charged with the following Honor Code violation(s): I.C.1.c. – Disruptive or intimidating behavior that willfully abuses, disparages, or otherwise interferes with another (other than on the basis of protected classifications identified and addressed in the University’s Policy on Prohibited Harassment and Discrimination) so as to adversely affect their academic pursuits, opportunities for University employment, participation in University-sponsored extracurricular activities, or opportunities to benefit from other aspects of University Life.
The student, Landen Gambrill, faces possible expulsion for her offense. Meanwhile, the man who she says raped her is still on campus.
Wait…what? This sound insane. How can this happen?
It happened because the University of North Carolina, like many other schools, handles what would be criminal cases outside its gates as exercises in student government. The number of ways that this encourages, excuses or otherwise guarantees unethical conduct and unjust results were neatly summarized by Michael R., who brought Gambrill’s case to my attention. He correctly points out that such systems that bypass the real justice system…
- Deny the accused the traditional safeguards and rights guaranteed by the court system
- May allow schools, Catholic Church-like, to hide embarrassing crimes committed on campus
- May deny the victims justice by inadequate punishment and incompetent administration
- Creates a double-jeopardy situation when the defendant is subsequently tried in a state courts.
- It can be used to brand students as criminals who have only committed offenses against trendy PC thought, such as “violence against women” that is verbal or psychological, and that would never be found to be an offense in a real court of law.
The Gambrill case, described here, shows the potential problems in full bloom. I confess that before Michael shared the links, it never occurred to me that a school could choose to hold its own kangaroo court for a crime as serious as rape. (UNC has since removed rape from the Honor Court’s jurisdiction.) As I consider the matter, I would want to see the policy swing far, far back in the other direction: only the most minor of student misconduct with the most fleeting of sanctions should be within a student “court’s” jurisdiction, and maybe not even that. I have seen how real courts, staffed with supposedly experienced and dedicated professionals, can get cases and disputed horribly wrong. Does anyone really believe that untrained, immature, inexperienced students are going to do as well? I wouldn’t allow a student court to deal with accusations of cheating, harassment, disparagement or “intimidating behavior,” much less rape, robbery and assault. A student’s academic career, reputation and record isn’t a proper object of on-the-job training by callow peers. If anything other than a stern reprimand or a mass raspberry is going to result, student conduct should either be examined before a panel of trained and neutral professionals and mediators, or the matter shouyld be dismissed. If the alleged offense is a crime, then it should be reported it to the police.
In short, what appears to be happening to Landen Gambrill should be impossible. Large institutions are inherently untrustworthy, because they tend to protect themselves above all. Trusting them with private law enforcement makes injustice inevitable.
__________________________________
Pointer: Michael R.
Graphic: Deviant Art
Ethics Alarms 
A few notes:
1. She didn’t report the rape to the police. This wasn’t the _university_ sweeping things under the rug; the reason why there aren’t criminal charges being filed is that she didn’t seek that sort of resolution and didn’t even report her rape to the police.
2. Yes, the honor court should have reported this to the police. While it’s possible to argue that this isn’t their role, that doesn’t really hold (ethical) water with me (the only argument that I’d even somewhat accept is procedural, and bureaucracy, well, isn’t ethics). At the very least, they should have informed her that it was a police matter and that honor court really wasn’t the appropriate venue.
3. In cases like this, the honor court’s typical role is to determine what should be done about the alleged offender _while the court case is pending_. In some cases, there’s enough evidence to summarily expel the offender independently of criminal conviction; in others, the honor court will decide to suspend the student until the court case is completed.
Of course, this time, there _isn’t_ a court case. The university still, however, seems to be treating it as they would a criminal case before jury selection…
I saw that. I don’t blame her; I blame the university. This is a mini-Penn State. The school has a duty to report. Who knows how confused she is?
As for when the case is pending, that should be a matter of policy, not up to some group of kids. If a student is charged with a felony, he’s on leave and gets off campus. How hard is that? What’s there to decide? “Oh, the evidence suggests that though he’s charged with rape, he’s really a swell guy. He can stay.” Huh?
But he _isn’t_ charged with a felony. He hasn’t been arrested or taken into police custody. And, while Ms. Gambill has _accused_ him of raping her, she hasn’t _charged_ him with doing so.
And the university has to keep a lot of duties in mind — one of which is to protect an unnamed individual against slander and fraud. Moreover, frankly, the school doesn’t seem to have any basis for putting him on leave.
There’s critical information I’m missing, of course, and I don’t know what the assorted people involved saw or think about the situation. What I do know is that this situation seems to be anything but clear-cut.
I still don’t get you. He’s not charged with rape because the school apparently said it would handle it as an “honor code” issue, which is idiotic on its face. If they dismiss it, they are claiming that it is a code violation on her part to pursue it. Thus they are operating as an extra-legal, screening body, which they may not do. George Zimmerman wasn’t charged with murder, but a bunch of kids weren’t given the job of deciding whether he would be or not. Accusation of rape = probable cause for arrest if the accusation is credible. The school has no business doing anything but dialing the phone.
He was accused by name, obviously, or he couldn’t have had his accusation dismissed. All accusations of felonies are potentially slander if they are willfully false—again, not the school’s job, no way, no how. Too bad for him: he gets a vacation until it’s resolved. If she was lying, there are consequences.
She shouldn’t have taken it to a student disciplinary body in the first place — she should have taken it straight to the police. That said, there are multiple issues here, with related unknowns.
And, as I said… yes, the school should have contacted the police. If they pressured Ms. Gambill into not reporting it to them, that too was a major ethical violation (and a lot of other things besides). Hell, that’s not even the worst thing I noted there — the flat-out denials of the accusations that they’d pressured her and others into not reporting are, to say the least, highly disturbing (an ethical actor would have, in the absence of having personally seen evidence to support the accusations, immediately started investigating).
But… well, as I said, there are multiple issues here, and the situation is complex and muddled.
Also — on a complete tangent — is there some way to turn on comment notifications without actually making a comment? I keep forgetting to click that button…
Search me…I have no idea.
Agreed. Yes, she should have taken it to the police, but if the university made a point of instructing students that this was to be handled internally, I can understand why she wouldn’t.
“Catholic Church-like”
Uh, pardon me?
As in “they hid abuses by priests”…
Yes, was that really so obscure? Michael’s properly expressed concern about such systems is that they allow an institution to avoid bad publicity and scandal by sweeping crimes under the rug by “internal review.” I can’t think of a better example of that than the Catholic leadership and its internal handling of child abuse, which was “we’ll send you somewhere new to molest little boys.”
How about the public school system which still does the same thing, more frequently, and isn’t held to nearly the same standards about it? There’s something to be said for the complaint that the Catholic Churches’ (admittedly) poor choices on the matter have become little more than a punching bag to easily attack the institution.
No, there isn’t.”Poor choices”? How about “aiding and abetting sexual molestation, obstruction of justice, criminal negligence, and child endangerment”? Calling all that “poor choices” is like saying that Stalin was Mr. CrankyPants. The public schools, in fact, do the opposite–they call the police on toddlers for looking at teachers with angry eye-brows.
I’ll try to short circuit this with an example: “may have babies out of wedlock, African-American like, that drains resources from our treasury.” Is there anything wrong with that?
Yes, it’s a terrible analogy. There is no organization known as “African Americans.” They do not have mass policies, or a grand mission of benevolence. It is controverted that the entire Catholic Church followed an either explicit of implicit policy of not removing sexual predators or informing the public of their crimes. It is unfair to tar an entire race with the harmful conduct, as if it goes hand in hand with skin color. It is absolutely fair to compare any example of institutional cover-ups of crimes to the detriment of victims with the Catholic Church.
“I can’t think of a better example…”
Do you know the “Jeopardy” episode of “Cheers” where Cliff tries to identify three people he never heard of by entering the question, “Name three people who have never been in my kitchen?” The fact that you can’t think of a better example doesn’t provide evidence of anything except your own lack of knowledge.
Also, why should you have to think of a BETTER example before replacing Catholics as the specified villain? Shouldn’t it be the same standard for everyone?
Hammering on Catholics in every situation has become a new version of argumentum ad hitlerum. You hope that the fellow who brought this to your attention used Catholics as a prop because he doesn’t know anything — doesn’t know anything about the Star Chambers at other universities, doesn’t know anything about abuse in other churches, schools, youth protective services, and other service organizations, doesn’t know how all the organizations reacted in the same way. He might not know better, and you’d have served him much better by pointing him towards more analogous educational situations for comparison.
Oh, this is just blather, Rory. I am criticizing the Catholic Church, an organization, not Catholics, and I’m not criticizing it for “every situation”, I am justly scoring the institution for a mass crime for which it has already paid millions upon millions in jury verdicts and settlements. I can think of plenty of other examples—Penn State, various sports and drug use, ACORN, there are dozens…but there is none better (that is to say, worse) than the Catholic Church, which betrayed its own values by choosing to protect its inside group rather than live by its stated and supposedly sacred values. Why would anyone, at this late stage, seriously try to argue that the Church has been treated unfairly? I’m amazed, after such a core collapse of integrity, that it survived as well as it did.
Don’t be so surprised. Modern mass media makes it a lot easier for the news to spread, and the more victims that come forward the more likely additional victims are to have the courage to come forward. This creates an artificial picture of an ongoing string of scandal, rather than an ongoing string of *finding out* about scandal that already happened. In past generations the news wouldn’t have the same level of media saturation, which creates the idea that many people have that all or most priests are abusers, rather than a tiny number of abusers and an unconscionable policy of protecting them.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a dark time, but the Catholic church is doing just fine on a global scale. You want a rough time? Consider the aftermath of the Crusades, the Great Schism, the Borgia era, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Protestant Reformation- compared to those, this is small potatoes. Not to minimize the suffering involved or the need to overhaul and clean house, but this is hardly shaking any foundations.
The following example is just as good an example as the Catholic church.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chaim-levin/incompetence-or-corruption-ultra-orthodox-sex-abuse-and-the-brooklyn-district-attorney_b_2533549.html
No, it’s not. It’s nowhere near as high-profile, the groups involved aren’t a major international organization… etc.
Universities acting like the Roman Catholic Church, ‘protecting’ abusers by simply moving them to other parishes where they can continue their behavior, and in the University’s case, having other students make legal/moral/ethical judgments? Many, many women do NOT go to the police for rape… embarrassment, the ‘medical procedures’ involved to gather evidence, their emotional need to simply pretend it didn’t happen. For the University to take advantage of this is unthinkable. It should have pressed her (with all the good reasons) to file formal charges… instead, they let it slide — to protect themselves, obviously. How many years did Penn State protect its sexual abusers? No lessons learned from that?
After all that has been revealed about the Catholic Church protecting sexual abusers, I am astonished that anyone in the world gives a good goddamn about who will be the next Pope. Pope Pius collaborated with the Nazis; other Popes have protected their own misbegotten priests against legal action by spending hundreds of millions of dollars buying off the families of abused children. “Religious leader?”
And if universities and other non-profits take the same attitude, women and young men beware.
This is true.
In the Naval Academy in Annapolis, violations of Academy regulations are usually tried by midshipman honor courts (although of course, courts-martial retain jurisdiction to try regulation violations, as the UCMJ expressly prohibits disobeying lawful regulations.) Honor courts do not handle rape cases; accusations of rape would be handled by NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service), whose chain of command bypasses the Academy.
Jack: Do you notice here the similarity between this case and the one at Silsbee High School, Texas last year? The real issue here, as I see it, is the virtual decriminalization of sex offenses against young women, including minors. Girls seemingly are expected to shut up and wait for the slow wheels of justice to turn… and nevermind that they are also required to rub elbows with their accused and out-on-bail attacker. Isn’t this a little more than a “bitch slap”? Has academic society (or civil justice, for that matter) become so calloused to rape and other such crimes that it’s become just another “infraction”? Have we lost track of what is inherent in the term “felony”? If women and children have no call to special justice from our court system- anywhere- then I maintain that the court system has failed in its prime task.
Ask Wanetta Gibson about that.
Why?
I agree that the police should have been involved with the rape charge and that the rape charge does not belong in the schools honor court. With that said I have no issue with the accused being allowed to continue to attend, he is innocent, were a real court to find him guilty of any charge I could see the honor court taking action in getting him removed from campus if not already incarcerated. I cannot get onboard with sanctions against an accused such as removal from campus or restricted access when there has not been as much as a charge or bail hearing on the matter. The cries of “he is still on campus” as an argument or condemnation against the school is ridiculous, he is innocent, not only because he has not been found guilty but because he isn’t even charged. To expect the university to restrict his freedom in any way is to fly in the face of the freedoms we are guaranteed.
As for the honor court going after her for I.C.1.c. – Disruptive or intimidating behavior that willfully abuses, disparages, or otherwise interferes with another (other than on the basis of protected classifications identified and addressed in the University’s Policy on Prohibited Harassment and Discrimination) so as to adversely affect their academic pursuits, opportunities for University employment, participation in University-sponsored extracurricular activities, or opportunities to benefit from other aspects of University Life. I see no issue with it in terms of the code itself and if they are using it because she is harassing or intimidating the yet to be charged innocent man. If her actions are negatively affecting his or others well being or creating a hostile environment then they should absolutely bring the charge. Reasonableness must rule, if they are using it as repercussion for reporting sexual assault then of course it is wrong, but if they brought it because she is following him and his friends around with signs saying they are rapists or making threats of some nature then it would be apt.
The last bit I would take issue with is “In short, what appears to be happening to Landen Gambrill should be impossible.” Why? Being a victim does not alleviate you from following rules. They have far more right to make a decision based on this code violation then of a crime of rape. If she feels there is no justice then she needs to go to the police not disrupt the academic life of the rest of the school.
“Large institutions are inherently untrustworthy, because they tend to protect themselves above all.” Agreed “Trusting them with private law enforcement makes injustice inevitable. “ I don’t necessarily agree it is inevitable but I do agree law enforcement does not belong in their honor court.
I would additionally argue that the Honor court would be a check against the institutions ability to protect itself as they are independent of the school administration, thus having them in place is far more preferable then doing away with them and leaving everything up to the school administration.
I thought a bit more about this and looked a little farther into the information available and I will go a step farther in saying that the code violation she was charged with is absolutely appropriate. Utilizing the university resources for sexual assault is absolutely abysmal as it has none of the protections for the accused that a real court would have and the accused really has no way of effectively fighting against the charges or clearing their names. It seems to me that this young lady used this system specifically and avoided going to the police because it would have been counter to her agenda. I see no reason to be outraged against the accused in this case.
Upon receiving the claim the university immediately suspended him. Excerpts below with comments, links to the articles at the bottom.
“When Gambill filed a complaint against him in February 2012 — four months after ending the relationship — the allegations were received by two separate University bodies: the student-led honor system and the emergency evaluation and action committee, which issued the suspension.
The emergency committee, composed of various administrators, serves to evaluate students who might be at risk to themselves or others, said Melinda Manning, former assistant dean of students and chairwoman of the committee at the time of Gambill’s complaint.
“During the time of his suspension, he was found not guilty of two counts of sexual misconduct by a University Hearings Board consisting of two students, two faculty members and one administrator in May 2012.
The hearings board was used during interim procedures after sexual assault was removed from the jurisdiction of the honor system.
He was found guilty of verbal harassment”
How does an accused fight against this? Call the police and say he has been accused of sexual misconduct please help?
From the accused’s lawyer
“He said his client faced a series of roadblocks for readmittance, even after the sexual assault case was adjudicated.
“It took him from May 29, 2012, to December 5, 2012, to regain readmission to the University,” Gresham said.
He said the process was delayed by requirements that were added sporadically, such as more psychological tests.
Manning, who Gresham said recused herself on June 7, 2012, said the emergency committee — which is not affiliated with the honor system — can prolong readmission until the committee feels that a student is no longer a threat and is healthy enough to return.
Gambill’s ex-boyfriend said his transition to campus has been made painful by Gambill’s sexual assault advocacy.”
I think it must be mandatory that the university has to contact the police in these cases, and I think it is even proper that the university has the ability to take actions against threats to students but this whole case screams to me that the accused was more of the victim of the university then the young lady.
As for the “University Justice Isn’t Ethical, Isn’t Reposponsible, And Isn’t Justice, Either.” I agree but not because they choose to go after her but for what they did to the accused. The code she is accused of violating has every appearance of being a valid charge.
http://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2013/03/landen-gambills-ex-unc-forced-me-out
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/344345
One of the problems of having this in the honor court is that I don’t have a clue about which one is the wronged party. Without going to the real court system, you don’t known what kind of evidence there is against the man, so we are left with the following possibilities:
(1) Her complaint is legally groundless because she has no evidence of the rape and it falls into a he-said she-said situation. In that case, she is risking libel and slander by accusing him of being a rapist. Since the honor court is considered an academic record, I believe that the proceedings are protected by FERPA. Her public statements about this case would actually violate federal law and she could be sued for that as well EVEN IF SHE IS RIGHT.
(2) She has enough evidence of an offense that he could be charged by the DA with sexual assault. In that case, she should be furious that this case has been dismissed, but she is barred from discussing anything that happened in the honor court by FERPA.
One of the problems with this situation is that we don’t know which is the case because it is locked up in the secrecy of the honor court. Another problem is her desire to have him thrown off-campus. UNC has over 20,000 students, making it a small town. In a rape case, the accused isn’t banished from his town. He would likely be put under orders to have no contact with the accuser, but that’s all.
I have a lot of respect for Chancellor Thorpe, but the honor court should NEVER have been allowed to deal with situations like this. I know the students want the honor courts to handle things like this because they feel that they can be important and they can deal with situations where they feel the normal court system can’t give them justice (for instance, a date-rape case where there is no evidence beyond the word of the victim). I understand the University’s benefit in locking these incidents into the secrecy of the honor court. Even if it was the student honor court’s decision to handle cases like this, someone in the administration needed to stand up, be an adult, and tell them they couldn’t do it. It would not have been popular, it would have resulted in protests, chanting, and disruption of the campus, but it needed to be done.
Michael R.
The Honor court didn’t have anything to do with the sexual misconduct charges, the University Hearings Board did. Now arguably it may not be much better than the honor court since it is made up of two students, two faculty members and an administrator but it was not the student honor court. Obviously the proper place for this was a real court but she still, despite all the press, has yet to take it to the police. There is a reason for this, it may be practical or nefarious, but either way the complaint against her now is through the honor court and appears to be more in line with what the honor court should be able to deal with. To me the complaint does not appear to be based on the honor court or university seeking to silence anyone who has been raped but to determine if her actions have violated the sited code.
You can’t convince me that anyone should have to face an honor code for a vague, speech-restricting offense like “Disruptive or intimidating behavior that willfully abuses, disparages, or otherwise interferes with another.” This is another campus speech code of the censorious, political-correctness-furthering sort Thee FIRE spends all its time fighting, and there isn’t time (yet) for them to go after this one. But that’s another issue.
I like FIRE but I doubt they will touch this one since 1) there is every appearance that this will be dropped. 2) there was cause.
How does that change the essential censoriousness and social control represented by the code provision? A vague and autocratic speech code is wrong whether there is cause or not.
How are speech codes different from the UCMJ’s General Article (forbidding conduct prejudicial to discipline and good order, which applies to the service academies)?
They should be different. The military isn’t a democracy, and the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply in all respects to military culture. The real US, which is what colleges supposedly are training students for.