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Last April we passed on word that a student at the University of Portland had been threatened by administrators with disciplinary action after reporting a sexual assault. She and a male student had been drinking at a party in violation of university policy. She told the university he raped her in her dorm room. The university took no action.
A year later, after the student went to the campus newspaper with her story, she got a letter from the university’s judicial co-ordinator saying that the two students’ drinking had made “consent—or lack of consent … difficult to determine,” and that “there are possible violations for which [the complainant] could be charged.”
Today comes word that the university’s sexual assault reporting policies have been revised. The new policy reads as follows:
“To foster the safety and security of the entire community, the University of Portland encourages reporting of all instances of sexual assault. … To remove barriers to reporting, the University will not pursue potential policy violations of the survivor which occurred in the context of the sexual assault. Likewise, the University will not pursue potential policy violations of a person who comes forward to report sexual assault.”
This change brings Portland’s policies in line with Catholic colleges like Gonzaga, Santa Clara and Notre Dame. According to a university administrator, it brings the university’s written policies in line with “the University’s values and practices regarding sexual assault that have been in place for many years.”
Thanks to Inside Higher Ed for the heads-up. New visitors are welcome to follow us on Twitter.
The folks behind the Take Back NYU protests have come in for a lot of abuse in the last week, and though some of it has been on-target, quite a bit has fallen wide of the mark. I’ll be posting my own take on the occupation itself soon, but before I do that I want to explore a few of the critics’ more telling errors and misstatements.
A gay first-year student at Jacksonville State University in Alabama claims that he was rejected by the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity because of rumors about his sexual orientation. On one level, this is an unsurprising story. But on another, as Pam Spaulding notes, it’s very interesting indeed.
Steele Jackson says Pi Kappa Phi blackballed him when rumors that he was gay began to circulate, but chapter president Chris Stokes denies it, saying the frat doesn’t “discriminate based on … any kind of orientation.” In that, Stokes is following the mandates of the fraternity’s national body, which bars discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
So Jackson, a gay student at an Alabama state college, was willing to say so publicly. The president of the local chapter of the fraternity he pledged denied explicitly that the frat discriminates against gay pledges. And they both made their statements in an article in their campus newspaper.
As Spaulding says, “this particular story has a lot to offer in terms of observations about life in Red State America and the changes that are under way.”
Substance-free, but amusing: Emily Rowe, a candidate for student government president at the University of Western Ontario, has made a campaign video riffing on the Discovery Channel’s “Boom De Ya Da” promo.
It’s pretty well done. You can watch it below.
(In case you’re wondering, Rowe’s platform calls for establishing a university liquor store, installing more laptop outlets in public campus spaces, and composting dining hall food waste.)
Thanks to Joey Coleman for the heads-up.
Last semester, Brenda Councillor was a student senator at Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas, and a vocal critic of university president Linda Sue Warner.
This semester she’s an alumna.
And she’s still not quite sure how it happened.
Councillor had one required course left to take as the fall semester ended. She was enrolled for the spring, and settled into her dorm room. But over the holidays, the registrar called her to congratulate her on her graduation.
The university was waiving her final required course and refunding her spring tuition and fees. They were also locking her out of her dorm room, shutting down her student email account, and mailing her a (misspelled) diploma.
When Councillor, who had circulated a petition in the fall demanding President Warner’s removal, wrote to the university’s vice president for academic affairs to ask why she had been involuntarily graduated, he blew her off.
“My priority is working with current Haskell Indian Nations University students,” he wrote. “Your concerns as a recent graduate of Haskell Indian Nations University in American Indian Studies will not be considered at this time.”
Ouch.
11:40 am Update: Linda Sue Warner, the president of Haskell Indian Nations University, has been summoned to Washington DC for a meeting with her university’s regents and the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
studentactivism.net 
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