U.Va. president blames feds for response to Rolling Stone debacle

Those regulations did not stop her from treating innocent people as rapists, however.

Sullivan, speaking to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, said the school couldn’t counter the Rolling Stone article about a now discredited accusation of a brutal gang rape because of a law known as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

“The university couldn’t say it wasn’t true because of FERPA,” said Sullivan, referring to federal student privacy law. “And the only reason I can say it to you now is because there’s a police chief’s report, which is not FERPA-protected.”

But in the wake of the Rolling Stone hoax, Sullivan, despite now admitting the school knew all along that the claims were false, spent little time suggesting evidence be collected before punishment meted out. Two days after the article was published, the Inter-Fraternity Council decided to suspend social activities for one weekend. Sullivan immediately expanded that suspension to two months, and only allowed fraternities and sororities to resume social activities after signing new agreements with the university.

Sullivan told the Times-Dispatch that universities should not “run roughshod over student privacy,” but that schools “are put into a position in which we cannot defend ourselves.”

Sullivan did try to defend her school – by placing blame on the fraternities when she and her administration had access to the reports made by the Rolling Stone accuser, Jackie, that did not line up with the magazine article.

Sullivan also said that the rector who apologized to Jackie during a board meeting did so due to “emotion” and “pressure.”

“I think what you saw from our board was the commitment to deal with it and not run from the issue,” Sullivan said.

But did dealing with the issue have to result in placing blame on innocent students?

By the way, some of those students maligned by the university and the press are suing Rolling Stone.