By Katie Taylor and Cole Miracle, The Miami Student
The following piece is the first in a series that will address the complexities of sexual assault. Future stories will expand on why the crime is underreported, the intricacies of the university disciplinary system and the difficulty of successfully prosecuting perpetrators in the criminal world.
Part One
The number of on-campus sexual assaults reported yearly at Miami University nearly tripled from 2011 to 2013, but there was no corresponding increase in the number of individuals disciplined for the crime.
Reports jumped from seven in 2011 to 20 in 2013 at Miami's Oxford campus, according to Clery Act data released by the university in October.
Out of the total 45 individuals accused during those three years, Miami punished only 10. Nine of the 10 were allowed to return to campus following punishments that included suspension, probation, no-contact orders and alcohol assessment. One was permanently expelled.
These numbers reflect only a small portion of incidents involving students, since the Clery Act-the federal law requiring colleges and universities to report data on campus crimes-does not require schools to report sexual assaults that occur off campus, unless in an affiliated establishment such as a fraternity or sorority house.
The scarcity of disciplinary action in cases of sexual assault is leading some to question the effectiveness of the university adjudication process. Researcher and advocate with the national Title IX movement Nadia Dawisha said institutions' response to the crime is inadequate, not only at Miami, but across the nation.
"As long as there is an incentive for universities to sweep this issue under the rug, then I don't think anyone receiving a paycheck from the university should be working on sexual assault," she said. "I think everybody needs to be external."
University President David Hodge said the low disciplinary rate is not unusual, and that it reflects the complexity of cases brought into the system.
"This is an area that, boy, I wish we all had a crystal ball and could figure this out," he said. "A very significant portion of the cases that are brought forward on campus have a substantial amount of ambiguity in them … It's often one person's word against another person's word, and trying to find the corroborating evidence that can shift the balance to one side or another is very difficult to do."
Miami is facing a lawsuit filed by a student who was allegedly sexually assaulted in 2011. Grace, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, said Miami failed her by not expelling the student who assaulted her, Antonio Charles, for earlier acts of sexual misconduct.
Charles was investigated by Miami University and Oxford Police after his fraternity brothers reported him for voyeurism in 2009. Charles' was accused of recording sexual encounters with women without their knowledge. He was not prosecuted in the criminal courts.
Though videos of sexual acts were confiscated from his possession, the university did not hold a conduct hearing because they could not identify the women in the tapes as students of the university.
In Grace's case, a disciplinary board of Miami's Office of Ethics and Student Conflict Resolution found Charles "responsible" for her sexual assault-the equivalent of a guilty verdict. The board also found him responsible for the separate physical and sexual assault of a different female student committed the night before. The university then expelled him permanently-the only person to receive that penalty for a sex-related offense from 2011 through 2013.
"The school and President Hodge say they have not done anything wrong, they've done everything that they needed to do," Grace said. "They had plenty of reason to have a disciplinary hearing [in the earlier accusations against Charles], and they didn't. I might not have ever been sexually assaulted."
Results from Gallup's 2015 "Survey of College & University Presidents," which collected responses from more than 600 school presidents, showed that while about one third strongly agreed sexual assault is prevalent at U.S. colleges, only 6 percent believe it's an issue at their institution.
Dawisha pointed to the survey as proof of an underlying problem.
"I just feel like so many universities are taking this very reactive approach to this issue. They don't want to admit that they have a problem," she said. "They're denying the research that has literally come out of their universities."
Susan Vaughn, director of the university's Office of Ethics and Student Conflict Resolution, oversees the university's response to all accusations of sexual misconduct, ranging from rape to indecent exposure.
Of the 45 on-campus sexual assaults reported from 2011-13, 18 proceeded with OESCR hearings. Eight of the accused individuals were found not responsible.
Vaughn said the data on sexual assault and disciplinary action doesn't paint a full picture of the university's response to the problem.
"I'm always reluctant to just hand over numbers," she said. "I always just say you have to walk in our shoes, to see and hear the different cases, the way it impacts people differently, the way an accused will present herself, himself."
Vaughn listed a handful of intricacies that come with handling accusations of sexual misconduct cases. Of the few victims who report such crimes, many choose not to proceed with disciplinary action, and the cases that do reach OESCR often pit the word of an accuser against the word of an alleged offender, with no other evidence.
"These are really tough cases for universities to handle," Vaughn said. "And it says something when even the criminal courts have difficulty with cases like this, so now it's ended up in places like [universities]."
In addition to the ongoing lawsuit, Miami has been scrutinized for violating the Clery Act rules at least twice in the past.
In 1997, the university was among the first three institutions to be fined by the U.S. Department of Education for failing to properly inform sexual assault victims of the outcomes of disciplinary cases.
Then, in 2005, the Department of Education fined Miami $27,000 for the same offense.
"[Miami] had again the dishonor to be one of the very small number of schools to be twice found in violation of the Clery Act," said S. Daniel Carter, former director of policy for the Clery Center for Security On Campus and campus safety advocate.
The student suing the university stressed the urgency of taking a stand against sexual assault, saying it's time for Miami to increase efforts dramatically.
"It's really widely spread knowledge that this is a huge problem on college campuses and has been for a long time," Grace said. "If you're the administration of a college campus, you can't act like this is something you don't want to deal with … it needs to be something we deal with right now."