YALE FORCED To Settle Bizarre Due Process Rape Case. Innocent Jack Montague Prevails.
Last week, the long-lasting lawsuit between Yale and its former basketball captain was settled without releasing the terms of the agreement. Normally after such an outcome, the university spokesperson issues an anodyne statement to the effect that the school prioritizes safety and will continue to do so in the future. In this instance, Yale took a different course: university spokesperson Thomas Conroy declined to comment. It’s easy to see why Yale couldn’t even come up with something to say — the university’s handling of the Montague case cut many corners. In 2015, amidst heavy pressure from campus activists and left-leaning media for an alleged insufficient toughness on sexual assault, Yale Title IX officials learned (second-hand) that a female student had a “bad experience” (that was it) with Montague at some time in 2014.
YALE TIX: For several weeks, increasingly desperate Title IX officials urged the accuser to file a report against Montague, but she demurred. According to the investigator’s contemporary report, this refusal was accompanied by a Yale official telling the accuser that Montague had a previous disciplinary incident—a disclosure that violates FERPA. The accuser still wasn’t willing to file a complaint against Montague. So Yale officials organized a final meeting with her, joined by David Post, chair of Yale’s Title IX tribunal. At the meeting, Yale told the accuser they’d set up a special process for her—in which Yale’s Title IX office would file the complaint against Montague, and she would just appear as a witness. This manipulation of procedures led to three areas of concern…Once the hearing process commenced, Montague’s chance of exoneration was virtually nil. Montague sued, hiring Max Stern to represent him. As occurred in the Amherst case, in which Stern also procured a settlement, Stern’s filings were rich in detail and laden with exhibits, allowing for an unusually detailed understanding of the case.
JUDGE: Judge Alfred Covello allowed the case to proceed to trial. The key issues: Yale’s manipulation of its Title IX process; a lack of basic fairness in Yale’s targeting of Montague; and the possibility that Yale had found Montague guilty despite sufficient evidence to do so.The settlement was announced on the same day that the two sides would have needed to submit their pre-trial memos. Yale was unusually vulnerable here. Covello’s ruling allowed a trial that would focus not only on Montague’s specific case but, in effect, Yale’s entire Title IX process. Because of what happened to his basketball career, Montague had an unusually strong claim for damages.
YALE SETTLES: This capitulation comes on the heals of a new precedent-setting ruling from a federal judge in Tennessee that private universities, just like public ones, must provide due process protections to students accused of sexual assault, notes public interest law professor John Banzhaf. This bizarre and outrageous Yale case – in which an administrator reportedly first helped bring the charges and then chaired the disciplinary hearing which found him guilty, another administrator allegedly mislead the woman into thinking that Montague was a serial rapist, and the university investigated him for stuffing a pizza plate down a woman’s shirt as “sexual harassment” – is only the latest example where legal action was effective in challenging practices which were claimed to violate a student’s due process rights. The Tennessee ruling creates a a very important legal precedent, says Banzhaf, because courts in the past generally rejected student challenges, based upon fairness arguments, to findings by colleges that they committed rape, and only began ruling for the students when they began arguing that the campus hearings violated due process.
THE MEDIA: As seen in Conroy’s refusal to comment, the university apparently hopes that the issue will simply go away, without broader notice. The media that so actively covered the case three years ago seems eager to go along. The current unwillingness to comment stands in stark contrast to Yale’s performance when the allegations went public. T
hen, a Yale dean sent out a campus-wide email using the case to highlight the university’s purported commitment to safety. Those remarks—along with an even more troubling statement from the Yale women’s center—was amplified by CBS News, which chose to cover the case on its evening news broadcast. Three years later, the people who stood by Montague have been vindicated—and CBS News has moved onto other matters. (It mentioned neither Judge Covello’s ruling nor the settlement.) NBC News and the Washington Post displayed a similar pattern. Although Montague likely obtained a quite favorable settlement, this outcome is hardly a victory for him.
mindingthecampus– KC Johnson valuewalk– J.Banzhaf
