EXPELLED For A Night of Consensual Drunk Sex- MSU Male Is $283,000 in Medical Debt.
A year ago Michigan State University refused to comply with an appeals court precedent that requires an in-person hearing with cross-examination to students facing suspension or expulsion for sexual misconduct. It didn’t follow through until a medical school student sued the taxpayer-funded institution for depriving him due process in a proceeding stemming from three-year-old accusations by two female students in his program. Robby Soave at Reason has a sad update to the case: “Dev,” the son of Sri Lankan immigrants, has little chance of ever getting his degree and being able to pay back his $283,000 in medical school debt. The federal judge who ordered MSU to let Dev take necessary exams for his program a year ago ultimately blessed its unfair process in a December ruling, according to Soave, who has reviewed the full case file. Dev also lost his attorney in January and can’t afford “the caliber of lawyer” he needs to successfully appeal.
“The elephant in the room, of course, is Larry Nassar,” Soave writes in his exhaustive feature, referring to the MSU doctor who was later convicted of “serial sexual abuse” against female Olympic gymnasts. MSU’s failure to stop Nassar-who was credibly accused of molesting more than 250 girls- is, of course a travesty. But a course correction that involves automatic suspicion of the accused and departures from due process norms is not the right remedy. Unfortunately, this is exactly what has occurred on college campuses all over the country.
The elements of Dev’s case resemble many others. A night of drunken sex that one party claims was consensual and another party remembers differently; a significant passage of time; an insinuation that eventually becomes a formal accusation; a fraught effort to mount a defense; a life-derailing finding of guilt. Each party’s account of the debauched night’s events was a contradictory mess, but MSU wanted a guilty finding against Dev.
He is one of many students who find themselves in this situation. According to The Atlantic‘s Emily Yoffe, 40 percent of alleged victims do not immediately report what happened, and the average period of delay is 11 months.
How can these men defend themselves against this kind of accusation, when neither they nor their accusers remember everything that happened? How do they prove beyond a doubt that the people giving evidence against them—who themselves made embarrassing decisions—had reason to distort the truth, to disguise their own moral failings? How does an ostensibly fair system determine that exactly one person—Dev—must pay for what happened that night, and suffer the end of his career aspirations, social stigma, and permanent crippling debt, because of it?
“I’m broken,” says Dev. “I can’t fight this.”
thecollegefix.com-Piper reason.com-Soave
