Ruth Marcus denounces campus sexual assault policies

That advice is crucial because, as Marcus wrote, “the line between consensual sex and sexual assault is not always comfortably clear.”

Her advice as a parent to their son going off to college revolved around being sure that whoever they sleep with consents, because the “consequences of misjudgment can be life-shattering.”

As an example, Marcus relays the account of a Yale student accused of rape by a woman claiming she was too drunk to consent, even though she invited the male student over via text. Two months after the encounter, the female student emailed the male student accusing him of rape.

“Let’s just start with objective fact: you raped me,” she said in the email. “You are a rapist.”

Thirteen months after the night in question, the woman filed charges against the man. He was eventually found not guilty.

Marcus notes the outcome of situations such as the one at Yale hurts men and women.

“To a young woman who sincerely believes she has been raped but seems, at least from afar, to have been pushed by the prevailing culture into viewing a bad choice as a quasi-criminal event,” Marcus wrote. “To a young man who lived under the shadow of accusation and expulsion.”

That “shadow of accusation and expulsion” is far more damaging that Marcus lets on (or realizes). As with the case of Kevin Parisi, whose anxiety disorder was exacerbated by a prolonged investigation of a sexual assault complaint lodged against him. Parisi, like the Yale student, was found not guilty, but just being accused was enough to cause him irreparable harm.

So too was the case of the male student accused by Emma Sulkowicz, who now carries a mattress for performance art and to protest the university’s ruling in favor of the student she accused. The not guilty ruling didn’t protect the student from having his name leaked to papers. And the court of public opinion has declared him a rapist, held up by two other students’ accounts that he assaulted them as well (one said he was an abusive boyfriend and the other said he had groped her).

Maybe this kid is guilty and maybe he’s not, but the university found him not guilty yet still he was branded a rapist because he was accused.

Patrick Witt, a first-year student at Harvard Law school who, while an undergrad at Yale, had an “informal complaint” of sexual misconduct lodged against him by an ex-girlfriend. He never found out what he was accused of, and even though Yale, he said, assured him that the informal complaint wouldn’t be attached to his transcript and wasn’t the same as a disciplinary proceeding, news of the complaint got out.

Witt was a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship, but the committee received an anonymous tip of the sexual assault accusation. Witt withdrew his name from consideration. An anonymous tip was also sent to Witt’s summer employer, who then rescinded its offer of full-time employment upon the Yale student’s graduation. The accusation also cost him a potential career in the NFL.

Though he did get into Harvard Law, Witt had to address the accusation during his admissions interview.

Witt was lucky that he managed to move on from the accusation. Others have not been.

At Duke University, Lewis M. McLeod was expelled after being found guilty of violating the school’s sexual misconduct policy under a system that did not provide him with proper due process rights. The police did not file charges after investigating the claim. Expulsion was attached to his permanent record, though a judge has determined the school didn’t have the right to expel McLeod based on how the investigation was handled.

Even if McLeod is reinstated, retried properly and found not guilty, he has already been branded a rapist and had his future set back from his absence from school and his earnings potential has been diminished.

Other students I’ve talked to who are in similar situations have said the’ve become depressed and even suicidal.