New Sexual Assault Policy To Be Adopted Incorporates Suggestions From The Community
Provost Carolyn Dever and departing Dean of the College Charlotte Johnson released the final sexual assault disciplinary policy in a campus-wide email yesterday. Called the Unified Disciplinary Procedures for Sexual Assault by Students and Student Organizations, the policy will go into effect for all undergraduate, graduate and professional school students June 19.
The initial policy proposal was announced on March 14, and it has since undergone minor revisions. Changes to the original draft include the addition of definitions for the terms “incapacitation” and “intentional incapacitation,” as well as removing “aiding, abetting or inciting sexual assault” from the definition of sexual assault — these are now separate charges. Additionally, the final policy includes a section specifying that if the set of facts arising from a complaint under the new policy leads to alleged violations of other College policies or standards, then all claims will be investigated. The investigator designated under the new policy will determine responsibility for all claims. Allowance for the finding of any responsibility for the other claims will be determined by the disciplinary system of the alleged perpetrator’s school.
The final policy removes the Title IX Coordinator from the Sanctioning Panel, as proposed in the draft, and replaces her with a tenured or tenure-track faculty member who holds an appointment outside the academic fields of both the reporter of the violation and the alleged perpetrator. The Panel will thus be composed of this faculty member, the director of judicial affairs and an associate dean responsible for student affairs.
Finally, under the implemented policy, the provost designates a College official to consider each request for review — in the proposal, the Dean of the College would do this. For undergraduate cases, the Dean of the College will likely review all requests, according to a statement from the College, but a different administrator or senior faculty member will perform this function in cases involving graduate or professional students.
Revisions to the proposed policy were based on suggestions submitted through email, meetings with faculty, student committees and leadership groups and the Improve Dartmouth web site. The Unified Disciplinary Procedures for Sexual Assault by Students and Student Organizations can be found here.