A 17-month United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights investigation into a civil complaint made by two former Boston University students found that the university did not discriminate against the students on the basis of sex while investigating their separate sexual assault complaints and did not retaliate against them by initiating disciplinary action.
The decision, announced in two letters to Chancellor John Silber Friday, has ‘vindicated’ the university, BU officials said this weekend.
‘We would have preferred it done more quickly, but are very pleased with the result,’ said associate general counsel Michael Rosen. ‘We are vindicated, not relieved.’
Stephen Hennessy, attorney for the two students, was unwilling to comment on the decision Friday after being unable to contact his clients.
The complaint, originally filed by Kristin Roslonski in November 2001, was joined in April 2002 by Meghann Horner. Both students alleged the university failed to attend to their complaints of sexual assault in a ‘prompt and equitable manner,’ according to the letter, and both accused the university of responding to their complaints by sanctioning them for violating the university’s drug and alcohol abuse policy. If the OCR had found in favor of Roslonski and Horner, BU could have faced the loss of federal aid.
Rosen called the lawsuit an ‘insult’ to the Residence Life personnel, Boston University Police and others involved in the original investigations.
‘It was a real slap in the face, these allegations that we don’t take sexual assault seriously, that we sweep them under the rug for favorable statistics,’ he said.
The complaint consisted of two parts. One accused BU of violating Title IX by not investigating allegations of sexual assault in a way that would provide for a ‘prompt and equitable’ outcome. The other part of the complaint, that the university retaliated against the two students’ sexual assault complaints by imposing sanctions on them, was based federal regulations securing the use of Title IX rights from intimidation.
The OCR ultimately found that the investigations and BU’s responses to Horner and Roslonski were prompt and equitable, according to the letter. The office determined the investigation of Horner’s complaint, which lasted form Feb. 5, 2002 to March 15, 2002 after Horner claimed she was raped in an off-campus apartment on Jan. 31, 2002, was conducted with all necessary steps.
Horner claimed she was told the investigation would not proceed unless she notified her parents of her sexual harassment complaint. But because she eventually notified them herself, the OCR said it found ‘insufficient evidence to show that the issue of parental notification had a chilling effect on the Complainant’s filing of a complaint with Judicial Affairs.’
Roslonski filed her sexual assault complaint with BU on Nov. 30, 2000, after claiming she was raped in Claflin Hall on Nov 5, 2000, and was not notified of its outcome until Nov. 26, 2001. However, the OCR found this to be ‘prompt’ as well, based on miscommunication with Roslonski’s former lawyer and a verbal communication with her current lawyers in April 2001 that there was ‘insufficient evidence’ that she had been assaulted.
The OCR also determined that BU’s Office of Judicial Affairs never received medical records that would normally be used in their investigation.
The department also found that BU’s ‘zero-tolerance’ policy regarding drugs and alcohol has been applied fairly to all students, therefore not discriminating against the complainants’ Title IX rights. Neither Roslonski, Horner nor a university counselor could name students who did not file complaints because of concerns about sanctions, the reports said.
Roslonski and Horner also did not say they would not have proceeded with their complaints in the face of sanctions in OCR interviews, leading the office ‘unable to find that the policy had a chilling effect in practice on those deciding whether to file sexual harassment complaints,’ the letter said.
Both Horner and Roslonski admitted they violated the university’s ‘zero tolerance’ drug and alcohol use policy, according to the reports. Sanctions against Horner for using marijuana were dropped following a hearing on Sept. 27, 2002, while Roslonski was fined $250 and ordered to undergo substance abuse treatment.
‘It has been our experience, regretfully, that students using drugs or alcohol make unwise or non-smart decisions,’ Rosen said. ‘You go out to a party with a roommate and come back with someone else … you wake up the next day and something happened or something happened to you and you’re not even sure what happened because you were so stoned or so drunk.’
‘We don’t have a policy that says if you’re drunk or high and something happens to you that we should feel real sorry for you,’ he said later. ‘We do – we’ll punish them, but that doesn’t change you breaking the law.’
BU will make some changes to their policies, according to the reports. The Title IX coordinator and the OCR will be listed with contact information in next year’s Lifebook, which will also include a list of timeframes for which students can expect to hear results regarding grievance procedures. BU will also make clear students’ abilities to file sexual assault complaints according to the Student Code.
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