It’s finally happened — a woman was accused of sexual assault by a man and ended up being expelled under the same terrible policies that have railroaded so many male students.
The woman, identified as “Rose” by Buzzfeed News, tells a story similar to that of so many young college men. While drinking at a party, she and a male student went to her room and performed oral sex on each other. The male student left briefly to get a condom before the two began intercourse.
But the male student would eventually tell Washington State University officials that he felt “really uncomfortable” and “kept trying to leave” after the intercourse, but that Rose tried to make him stay. Apparently a group of students had gathered outside of Rose’s room during the sexual activity and tried talking to the accuser through the door because they thought he “did not want to do this.”
The male student told Rose he had to “go find his friends” and went into another student’s room, where he hid in a closet while Rose tried to find him. She eventually texted him to say “I miss you.”
The male student was allegedly teased about sleeping with Rose because she is short and overweight. She believes this is what led to the accusation. The male student provided several witnesses who claimed he had drank far, far more than Rose. Rose, however, said she had 15 cups of a vodka mixed drink.
Rose was ordered to leave her dorm room “to support and protect the complainant.” After she was accused, she filed a counterclaim against the male student.
“I felt kind of taken advantage of because of how drunk I was,” Rose told Buzzfeed. “I just wrote that night off as I drank too much and hung out with the wrong people,” Rose said. “But if he wants to say it happened when it didn’t happen, I’m gonna say it when it didn’t happen.”
Rose also said she filed the counter complaint to “prove a point,” but that she didn’t really want him investigated.
WSU looked at who was in control of the situation and who was more intoxicated. Though Rose provided text messages from that night, they were dismissed by school officials because they deviated from the timeline of events the accuser gave. The school wrote in its report that “the messages support [Rose]’s assertion that she was intoxicated … it is not clear how the timing of the text messages corresponds to the timing of the events of that evening.”
So, because the accuser’s story didn’t make sense with the text messages, they were dismissed.
Rose also said she gave the school the name of a witness who could confirm the timeline in the texts, but that witness told Buzzfeed she had never been contacted by the school.
Rose was removed from her study abroad trip and had to tell her parents why. Because of the no-contact order issued against her, she would have to duck into the back room of the cafe where she worked whenever the accuser entered.
By the end of the school year, the accuser asked the administration to drop the investigation. He asked again two months later, in July, but the school continued with its investigation and eventually expelled Rose. Her appeals failed.
This is the first case I’ve seen of a male accusing a female of sexual assault. I’d predicted before that this would happen one day, as Title IX is supposed to be gender neutral (though it rarely appears that way). Now a woman has been accused of sexual assault by a man, and was subjected to the same policies that take an accuser’s word as gospel and don’t properly weigh evidence from the accused.
And Rose is a reminder that being accused and expelled is not a mere roadblock for students. While Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and others try to make it seem like getting expelled is both a serious punishment for a serious offense yet not so serious that it’s life disrupting, like jail, the truth is that students like Rose face many problems after expulsion for something like sexual misconduct.
Rose applied to the University of Idaho after she was expelled, but was denied because she was a deemed “a risk” due to her expulsion.
There may be a temptation to say “ha!” to the feminist organizations that have turned Title IX into a weapon against college men at the thought of a woman being accused by a man. But Rose received the same poor investigation and treatment that many college men receive. It’s yet another reason why schools, pressured by the federal government to find accused students responsible, shouldn’t handle accusations.
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
