A lawyer who once prosecuted sex crimes for the U.S. Department of Justice stated the Jack Montague case represents the thin line many schools have to walk when investigating campus sexual assault. A female student at Yale University said she had non-consensual sex with Montague, who argued the contrary and was expelled following an investigation.
Jack Montague, the former captain of the Yale men's basketball team, responded to his expulsion by suing the school, all while the Bulldogs were on the verge of their first NCAA Tournament berth in 54 years. But no matter what Yale administrators decided for Montague, the school was destined to be criticized.
Shanlon Wu, a former DOJ prosecutor who specialized in sex crimes, wrote in an op-ed that school's in Yale's position run the risk of "overcorrecting" and being too harsh on the accused. The other avenue is well documented, as the U.S. Education Department has investigated more than 100 schools for allegedly mishandling sex crimes on campus, thus violating the federal Title IX law.
While the White House has prioritized Title IX enforcement, Wu wrote, schools are implementing policies that "pose grave dangers to accused students." In other words, the schools have the right intentions but are reacting to the ED's crackdown more than they are proactively protecting students.
"As a former sexual assault prosecutor, I know firsthand that prosecutors and police both consider sexual assault investigations to be among the most difficult cases to investigate and prosecute," Wu wrote. "The cases do not get any easier in a campus setting, which probably accounts for the reluctance of many prosecutors to take on criminal cases that involve college students. Police and prosecutors are particularly leery of cases where alcohol may have rendered one or both parties poor witnesses. In all criminal cases, both experienced police and prosecutors make careful threshold determinations as to whether a case is strong enough to warrant going forward to a trial. Such a threshold determination is missing in most campus sexual assault cases."
Montague's lawyer, Max Stern, released a scalding statement earlier this week criticizing the Yale administration of hastily making a decision based on what he indicated was weak evidence.
When Montague was expelled in February, Yale had not yet punched its ticket to the NCAA Tournament. But when news of his expulsion became public about a month later, the Yale Bulldogs were getting national attention for making their first NCAA Tournament in more than half a century.
Wu outlined what may be the central reason for why schools are so ill-equipped to handle such sensitive, complicated cases: disciplinary hearings.
"Going forward to a hearing in a campus sexual assault case means that these complex and difficult cases are most often decided by panels of students and administrator/faculty representatives who function as both judge and jury," he wrote. "Colleges and universities claim that these panelists receive training, but the extent and caliber of this training - and who conducts it - remain largely unknown.
"In the Montague case, Yale issued a statement of statistics regarding the number of its hearings that result in findings of responsibility. What would be far more telling would be the percentage of Yale's campus sexual assault allegations that go forward to hearings," he concluded.
