MALE SUES Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Claims Anti-Male Bias in Sex Case
A Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute student is suing the school over his suspension for sexual misconduct, claiming he is the victim of a disciplinary process that “was directly and indirectly designed to discriminate against male students on the basis of their sex.” The suit in federal Northern District court by “John Doe,” also contends the school has created a disciplinary “environment and culture in which a male student’s word is less credible than a female student’s word simply because he is accused of sexual misconduct.”
RPI is not alone among higher education institutions in facing such a lawsuit. “Schools often do a terrible job of adjudicating these cases,” said Samantha Harris, a lawyer and vice president of procedural advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, (FIRE) which follows First Amendment and other civil rights issues on college campuses. Harris said lawsuits about such campus cases have actually been rising since 2011. At that time, the Obama Administration issued a memo to college and universities nationwide suggesting they need to do a better job of combating sexual abuse on campus. “A lot of schools responded by taking shortcuts.” FIRE has seen 500 lawsuits similar to the RPI case, since 2011.
In the John Doe case against RPI, Scott Iseman (Doe’s lawyer) is seeking unspecified monetary damages and an injunction that would let his client, who lives in Wisconsin, return to school in the upcoming fall semester rather than waiting until 2020. They have raised questions of surveillance and other forms of proof. “We wanted them to preserve footage” Iseman said of police camera tapes they believe show his client and the woman walking peacefully through Troy when he was supposedly groping her. But city officials said the cameras weren’t working properly.
timesunion-Rick Karlin
