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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.
“One of the many upsetting aspects to being in your forties, is hearing people your own age grumbling about “young people” the way we were grumbled about ourselves.”
That’s how British comedian and activist Mark Steel begins his op-ed column on the current wave of British student protest and the dismissive attitude that many people his age take toward the youth of today. It’s a smart, funny piece, and worth a read.
For those of us who couldn’t make it to DC, the Powershift ’09 folks have put a bunch of video from the conference up online. Check it out.
On Wednesday we reported that thirteen campuses had cancelled contracts with clothing maker Russell Athletic in response to labor abuses at the company. As of today, that number has risen to nineteen.
When we passed on word that the University of Minnesota had dropped RA, we were under the impression that the action had been taken by Minnesota’s flagship Twin Cities campus alone. As it turns out, the entire U of M system — Twin Cities, Duluth, Morris, Crookston, and Rochester — have disaffiliated, and shortly after Minnesota acted, Harvard followed suit.
Finally, on Friday, NYU became the nineteenth campus to drop RA.
NYU’s decision, in the works since early February, would seem to represent a missed opportunity for the activist group Take Back NYU. Had they called for a break with RA as part of their sit-in demands last week, they would have linked their action to a student-led campus movement that is gaining momentum across the United States, and — as it turns out — have been able to point to Friday’s decision as a victory of sorts.
March 19 Update: The total now stands at 21 campuses, and you can find an update on recent organizing here.
May 1 Update: FIFTY-SEVEN campuses. Wow!
I haven’t yet fully unpacked the politics around Obama’s nomination of Chas Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council, but though his views on Israel and the Middle East are getting the most attention, my eye was drawn to this email he wrote three years ago on the Chinese government’s handling of Tiananmen Square :
I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be. Such folk, whether they represent a veterans’ “Bonus Army” or a “student uprising” on behalf of “the goddess of democracy” should expect to be displaced with despatch from the ground they occupy. I cannot conceive of any American government behaving with the ill-conceived restraint that the Zhao Ziyang administration did in China, allowing students to occupy zones that are the equivalent of the Washington National Mall and Times Square, combined. while shutting down much of the Chinese government’s normal operations. I thus share the hope of the majority in China that no Chinese government will repeat the mistakes of Zhao Ziyang’s dilatory tactics of appeasement in dealing with domestic protesters in China.
The Chinese government reported the death toll of their suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests at 241. Amnesty International estimated that one thousand protesters were killed, and other observers believe that the true number may have been several times that.
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