Although the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights found Boston University not at fault after two former students filed a complaint alleging the university mishandled their sexual assault investigations, the students will still file a civil suit against BU this summer, their lawyers said yesterday.
Kristin Roslonski filed the civil complaint with the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights in Nov. 2001, and was joined by Meghann Horner in April 2002. While the complaint accused the university of violating the students’ Title IX rights, the OCR found the university treated their sexual assault complaints in a ‘prompt and equitable’ manner, and that the university did not attempt to intimidate them by imposing sanctions for drug and alcohol violations.
Timothy Corcoran and Stephen Hennessy, lawyers for Roslonski and Horner, said their feelings on the decision were ‘mixed.’
‘Hidden in the decision were [concessions] BU only elected to do after tremendous pressure from these two young ladies,’ Corcoran said. ‘It paves the way for the lawsuit.’
The civil suit, which Corcoran said would probably be filed over the summer, would involve naming ‘certain individuals’ at the university and filing a cause of action to which BU would have 20 days to respond. After a fact-finding mission, the case would then go before a judge or jury, according to Corcoran.
The civil suit would be filed ‘if the young ladies want more change and don’t have the conviction BU changed,’ Corcoran said.
‘When [the OCR] asked Kristin in the first interview with her, she said she wanted things to change she doesn’t want them to happen to other kids,’ he said. ‘The story is not going to end here.’
Although Corcoran said he was ‘pleased’ with the DOE’s extensive investigation, he implied the inquiry was not especially hard-hitting.
‘One thing that came up time and time again was that the DOE made it perfectly clear they are a conciliatory body,’ he said. ‘If things are bothersome, they put them on the side.’
Corcoran said he recognized, though, that ‘they’re not the Suffolk County District Attorney; they don’t try and go out and find whether rape occurred.’
Even so, he said, their investigation turned up points that indicated BU’s process for looking into sexual assault accusations was far from perfect.
‘They use the word ‘troubling’ at least once,’ Corcoran said. ‘The report also said they applied ‘zero tolerance’ with minor exceptions. If you make an exception for one, you have to make an exception for another.’
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