STANFORD CAUGHT With it’s Pants Down: TitleIX Procedures Point to Discrepancies Between Statements & Practices
As college sexual assault policies draw increased scrutiny amid ongoing federal changes, documents reviewed by The Daily suggest that Stanford has publicly misrepresented aspects of its own Title IX practices. Bob Ottilie ’77, a lawyer who has advised accused students in Title IX cases at Stanford showed The Daily correspondence with Title IX staff. For Ottilie, the discrepancy between Stanford’s statements and practices is just one aspect of broader concerns about the rights of students accused in Stanford’s Title IX proceedings. Ottilie has criticized Stanford’s expectation that accused students initially respond to complaints without full details about the allegations against them, as well as the University’s practices around evidence admission. Ottilie also disputed University statements about how the Title IX Office redacts evidence. Documentation supported his account. He has also argued that the Title IX Office’s decisions in his clients’ cases show bias against male students. “[Stanford is] lying because they are ashamed of what they do.”
Email reviewed by The Daily showed that Title IX staff declined to interview the psychologist of a male client of Ottilie’s, who had filed a competing claim of sexual assault against a female accuser. Ottilie said the psychologist would have supported the male student’s claims and bolstered his defense. Explaining its decision in the email to Ottilie, the Title IX Office wrote that the conversation was not relevant because the student’s discussions with the psychologist were not contemporaneous to the alleged incident. “It was absolutely contemporaneous,” Ottilie disagreed, “because the young man was referred by the University for psychological assistance as a result of his emotional state [after breaking up with his accuser]. That all occurred literally within days of when the relationship ended.” Ottilie believes the Office’s decision to discount the source indicated gender bias, citing other cases at Stanford and beyond where conversations from long after an incident occurred were still deemed relevant to an investigation of a woman’s allegations. His client was unable to counter the decision: “The rules precluded my client from doing those interviews on his own,” Ottilie said.
Ottilie said one of his recent Stanford clients was moved out of campus housing for several months as an interim measure and only allowed to visit campus and attend class in the presence of a security guard. The student also had to notify Title IX of all non-class visits, he said, and rarely came to Stanford’s campus as a result of the constraints. “That’s a great big scarlet letter that says you are an accused rapist,” Ottilie said of the security guard… While the Title IX Office ultimately did not pursue a case against the client, Ottilie remarked:
“To this day Stanford has never done one thing for him to say they’re sorry.”
stanforddaily by Hannah Knowles
