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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.
I’ve come across three pieces of writing about Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the last couple of weeks, and they’re all worth passing along.
First, an article from the New York Times about the devastating effect that the current economic downturn is having on HBCUs. Second, a personal reminiscence from an HBCU alum. And finally, a response to that reminiscence. The third piece, a short post by Ta-Nehisi Coates of the Atlantic, produced a comment thread that’s well worth reading for its own sake.
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, a law-professors’ group blog, someone put up a link yesterday to a post by a guy who calls himself Gay Patriot West, saying that gay conservatives on campus get a warmer welcome from conservatives than they do from gays.
The comments thread on the Volokh post explored the issue from a few different angles, but it didn’t address one that I consider crucial — the historical context. Here’s the meat of my contribution to the discussion, posted just a little while ago:
Whatever ease gays have around conservatives exists only because of limitations on conservatives’ political power.
Fifty years ago, you could be imprisoned or institutionalized for being gay or lesbian. You could be jailed for hanging out with gays. You could lose your business if that business catered to gay people. Forget having any job security, or any recognition for your relationships, or any social deference to your life choices except in the most anomalous subcultures. To be gay or lesbian in the United States fifty years ago was to live in fear of disclosure and persecution.
Most of that has changed. But it has changed despite conservatives, not because of them. To a large degree it has changed over the vocal and forceful opposition of conservatives. It has changed because conservatives’ power has waned, because conservatives’ power has been constrained, and because conservatives have realized that most Americans don’t agree with their most anti-gay positions. And yes, it has changed because many conservatives have become less hostile to gays and lesbians, buoyed along by a broader cultural transformation that they did not initiate.
To the extent that it is easy to be a gay person among conservatives today, that is because of the weakness of traditional conservative values in American society today. The idea of conservatives as second-class citizens, deprived of basic civil rights, is a right-wing fever dream. That of gays and lesbians being deprived of basic civil rights is a matter of historical record.
The Gay Patriot has his ease because his side has been defeated in a thousand hard-fought struggles over the last half-century.
One other thing that I could have mentioned: The social and political climate for lesbians and gays in America has changed least in the last half-century in the parts of the country where conservatives remain strongest. It has changed the most in those places where conservatism is weakest. Gay Patriot West went to the University of Virginia law school. He lives in Los Angeles today. His experience of being a conservative gay man reflects those facts of his geography.
High school girls in an auto repair class in Central High School, Washington DC, 1927.
The Negro History Club of Albany State College in Georgia, 1940.
studentactivism.net 
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