Not Good Enough

IT'S ABOUT TIME. Almost a year and a half after comments by Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57 and Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Education Jeffrey Wolcowitz raised concerns about the Administrative Board's ability to deal adequately and fairly with charges of acquaintance rape, the Date Rape Task Force Finally released its recommendations on February 10. But unfortunately, we can only endorse some of them.

While acquaintance rape cases are obviously difficult to adjudicate, the deans' comments revealed a lack of understanding about a man's responsibility to gain consent for sexual activity and about a woman's right to have a "no"--any stated no--mean no. Later both Jewett and Wolcowitz apologized. Even so, cases of sexual misconduct are still decided by an Ad Board committee, a fact which has made some students feel uncomfortable about reporting cases of acquaintance rape.

Given that many rapes go unreported every year across the nation, the College's existing procedures, which seem to compound this reluctance, are completely unacceptable.

ALL OF WHICH makes the Date Rape Task Force's recommendations long overdue. But before the recommendations become standard procedure, they must be voted on by the Ad Board. Here's a quick summary of what the board faces:

Included in the Task Force's definition of rape is "any act of sexual intercourse that occurs without the expressed consent of the person [either male or female], or is accompanied by physical force or threat of bodily injury." The policy goes on to state that "[I]ack of consent may be indicated physically or verbally and needs only to be expressed once." In addition, the Task Force called for a package of steps designed to increase awareness of the policy and the newly-written rules.

The Task Force also established certain procedures the Ad Board would follow in the event that the accuser--or "complainant," as the report says--wished to press charges. These procedures include the procurement of written statements from both parties and all witnesses as well as the formation of a Peer Dispute Subcommittee.

The police would not be contacted (except with the usual statistics on violent crime) unless the complainant chose to go to the authorities (a step the Task Force "strongly encourage[s]" complainants to take).

As expected, the student-run subcommittee is the most controversial provision with stuffy Ad Board members. Basically each six-person subcommittee (there will be a separate one for each case) will be the Ad Board's "fact-finding agent." After some training, it will convene separate and confidential hearings with witnesses and the parties involved. Then it will report to the Ad Board, which will vote on whether it believes sexual misconduct occurred. Each subcommittee member will also get a vote.

WE AGREE WITH many of these recommendations. For example, we too feel that the community needs to be better informed "about the College's behavioral standards, penalties for violating those standards and resources for people who are subject to sexual misconduct."

The procedures the Take Force outlined for expanded education and counseling--including more written materials to be distributed to students and greater publicity of Harvard's resources--should be adopted.

In addition, the Task Force is right to ask that students be included on Peer Dispute Sub-committees created by the Ad Board to investigate complaints of sexual misconduct--and all other complaints. Put simply, the students who live in this community have a right to help decide verdicts in the disciplinary complaints brought against their peers.

We hope that the students on the committee can help to change the clandestine quality of many of the Ad Board's decisions. Important admonishments about "confidentiality" have on occasion gone too far, with questionable rulings never receiving the public scrutiny they deserve--which discourages some victims from coming forward and means some "respondents" (those who are accused) who are wrongly charged have no recourse.

Just as federal and state courts allow reporters to cover trials, the Ad Board's hearings should be open to the media as well. We do not ask for an unwieldy open forum with students able to raise questions at every turn of phrase, but we demand that members of the community have the ability to assess the Ad Board's now-closed decisions.

Specific cases in which confidentiality is necessary could be accommodated under such a plan. For example, in the cases of sexual misconduct, the subcommittees and the press should not release names, only facts.

Therefore, while we are encouraged by the Task Force's recommendation that disciplinary subcommittees include students, we are disturbed by its unwillingness to allow more public review procedures when necessary. The Task Force allowed for appeal only when new information is uncovered or when "failure of the Board to follow its written procedures" occurs. Furthermore, only the accuser--not the accused--can appeal the decision to the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Perhaps more than other cases, those involving sexual misconduct involve emotional responses to sometimes cloudy facts. More public review procedures--with names and places changed--should have been adopted.

FINALLY, WE MUST object again to the closed-door nature of the Task Force itself. Only Taks Force members were allowed to debate the policy--a policy which concerns all students who care about sexual misconduct or who will be involved in such cases. And only one male undergraduate (and three male administrators) served on the 19-member group. A little more diversity would have been nice.

In the end, and after many months, the Task Force came up with some good proposals. But only when all Ad Board procedures are open to student review will the College's disciplinary policies move out of the Star Chamber.