A new judicial process for sexual assault cases earlier this month went into effect after the administration, in collaboration with the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate and the student group Students Active For Ending Rape (SAFER), crafted a special procedure for Tufts to handle such allegations.
The new procedure employs an independent trained fact-finder to investigate allegations of sexual assault brought to the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs and also removes a previously existing statute of limitations for sexual assault complaints.
The revised adjudication mechanism accompanies a new sexual assault policy outlining options and resources for victims, which was finalized earlier in the summer. Both are currently available in full on both the student affairs and the SAFER websites.
They will apply to students in the Schools of Arts & Sciences and Engineering and the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.
Problems with the previous procedure
The old adjudication process for allegations of assault was no different than that used for handling minor Code of Conduct violations, Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman said.
"The conclusion about the old system was that cases of sexual assault and other cases of violence were handled the same way all other Code of Conduct violation complaints were handled," Reitman said. "What we did was recognize that there needed to be a different process for cases in which sexual assault was alleged."
TCU Senator Wyatt Cadley, a sophomore who represented the Senate in collaborating with Reitman, Judicial Affairs Officer Veronica Carter and other staff from the Division of Student Affairs, said that the previous adjudication mechanism was unfair to the victims.
"In the old system, the judicial process was just a mess," he said. Under that system, both the victim and the alleged perpetrator would participate in a judicial hearing and present their side of the story with all involved parties present, according to Cadley.
"Needless to say, this was an awful situation for everyone involved, largely because it severely undermined the university's ability to make a just and fair decision with all the facts," Cadley said.
The revised adjudication procedure eliminates the judicial hearing component, Reitman said.
"It was said that the judicial hearing was creating a hostile environment," he said. "The two students were not only in the same room, but had to confront one another, and in essence it felt like a cross [examination] in a courtroom. Both sides have said that they didn't get a chance to tell their story."
The new judicial mechanism
Under the new process, following the filing of a complaint with Reitman's office, a fact-finder will determine the circumstances surrounding the allegation through research and individual interviews with all involved parties, eventually providing a conclusive summary and recommendation for the dean of student affairs, according to Reitman. The fact-finder may also be used in other situations deemed to require further investigation.
"This is a thorough investigation, a thorough exploration of all information possible and all witnesses possible, always [interviewed] one at a time," he said.
The dean of student affairs will then either act on the recommendation or request for additional research to be done.
"I will only have the benefit of the report of the fact-finder, so it's not my interest to disregard the report," Reitman said. "If I had questions or if something remains unclear, I would ask the fact-finder to pursue some additional interview work."
Aside from the fact-finder, a support person and an impartial note-taker will also be involved in the judicial process.
The support person, who can be chosen and used by any student involved in the situation, can be a faculty member, a student, a parent or anyone the student trusts. According to the document outlining the process, the support person is only involved to offer psychological support and cannot be an attorney.
The new process is an improvement in terms of protecting the psychological well-being of both the alleged victim and perpetrator, SAFER President Derek Moody, a sophomore, said.
"It's a lot better because the complainant and respondent don't have to actually meet face-to-face, which would be traumatizing for the person who had been sexually assaulted," Moody said. "Now we're going to have a fact-finder who knows a lot about what's going through the heads of both parties. It's a more relaxed setting; you get to tell your whole story."
Cadley agreed that the new protocol ensured an appropriate treatment of the matter. "The overall sentiment of the process and the way in which it's going to be enforced ensures that the students will be able to find justice with dignity," Cadley said.
Tufts administrators used Harvard University as a model in the development of the new adjudication procedure, Reitman said.
"We met with representatives from Tufts to explain our process and to provide them with the material that is now available on our website," Associate Dean of Harvard College John Ellison, the secretary of the Administrative Board at Harvard, said in an e-mail to the Daily.
Harvard's administration has employed the fact-finder procedure successfully since 2000, according to Ellison. "The process is a great improvement and a successful addition to our process," he said.
Student affairs administrators at Tufts evaluated the program and thought the model would be applicable at Tufts as well, Cadley said.
Harvard's fact-finders are often attorneys who specialize in sexual assault cases, Reitman said. He said that Tufts' own university counsel, in conjunction with the Office of Student Affairs, will make personnel decisions.
"We're talking with Harvard to know if the people who have done good work for them are available to us," Reitman said.
The new judicial policy also eliminates the statute of limitations on sexual assault complaints, which previously specified a timeframe within which a victim could file a complaint. There is now no time limit for a complaint to be made following an incident.
"Under the new policy, so long as the alleged perpetrator is a still a Tufts student, a complaint may be brought forward regardless of when the alleged incident took place," Cadley said.
Mediation, a controversial measure discouraged by the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Education, has also been removed as an option in sexual assault cases, according to Reitman.
Sexual assault policy revisions
The updated process follows the May revision of the university-wide sexual assault policy, distinct from the adjudication process.
The Senate and SAFER last year collaborated with the Division of Student Affairs and Health Service to revise the sexual assault policy, in part due to the Senate's unanimously adopted March resolution calling for a new policy.
Following the resolution's passage, a Senate survey administered in the spring revealed that 73.3 percent of voters were "not familiar at all" with the student judicial process for cases of sexual assault and that 52.4 percent were not aware of the resources available to sexual assault survivors.
Reitman said a lack of publicity and clarity hindered awareness.
"Prior to this year, that material was not readily findable," Reitman said. "It also didn't really define what sexual assault was, and it didn't give a comprehensive list of resources. It was difficult to really identify what is the university's policy on sexual assault."
In contrast, the new policy is an improvement, Reitman said. "It's much more supportive for people looking for information, and it applies to all campuses," he said.
The new policy provides a more thorough definition of sexual assault and a more comprehensive list of resources available to survivors, Cadley said.
"The purpose is to provide definitions for things such as sexual assault, give an understanding of what consent is, providing a list of survivors rights and what the Tufts police will provide in terms of services if you report an assault," he said.
The Senate plans to monitor whether student awareness will change as a result of the new policy, Cadley said.
"We could track whether there was a relationship between having a more clear policy and students' understanding," he said. "It's something that we're going to continue to track throughout the year."
Cadley and Reitman said that while both documents are subject to slight modifications as they are implemented, they have been designed with clarity in mind.
"There are still some pieces of language that we'd like to clarify and the relevant administrators and the students working on this policy have an excellent working relationship and are committed to making this as clear a policy as possible," Cadley said.
Students will be able to ask questions about the new policy at an annual forum at the end of October. Reitman, other staff from the Division of Student Affairs and judicial affairs officers will be present to provide responses, Moody said.
