‘Mandatory reporting’ already exists on some colleges

Advocates have been pillorying the Safe Campus Act because it would prevent schools from using quasi-judicial campus discipline panels to investigate and punish students accused of sexual assault unless accusers first call the police. That seems hard to believe for those not familiar with the current campus climate, but police involvement is heavily disfavored by advocates. The reason is that law enforcement usually requires more evidence than a shifty accusation.

The mandatory reporting system mentioned in the headline is in reference to resident advisers (RAs) — usually students — who have to report incidents of school conduct violations to administrators.

“It’s a hindrance on your social life, because you know if a friend confides in you, you can’t necessarily keep it a secret,” Megan McDonald, a resident coordinator at the University of Michigan, told the New York Times. “It’s one of the burdens of having this role.”

But this means students like McDonald are also the first ones who have to interpret whether someone’s complaint is actually a serious accusation or not. And that can be tricky, as the Times points out.

Obvious accusations like being informed of forcible rape or sending explicit photos of someone else without their consent wouldn’t require much thought as to whether or not to report. The trouble comes for things that are “as difficult to measure as texting someone more than they may desire” and other subjective interpretations. Some may interpret the texting example as a clear incident of stalking, others might see that not all texting – even texts sent when someone doesn’t want to receive them at that moment – constitutes such harassment and would want to see more evidence.

The Times also notes another issue for university RAs when determining whether or not to report: The current campus climate of “political correctness that instills in students a fear of offending others and that hampers open dialogue.”

Students are being taught to run to authorities for help instead of doing something as simple as saying “no” or “please stop.” And that’s not even in response to a potential sexual assault, it’s to everything, even if someone is texting you too much or doing any number of a million other things that are annoying.

But back to the RAs. At many schools, they are required to report conduct violations to the university rather than the civil authorities – even if the violation is a clear felony, like sexual assault. So mandatory reporting is okay so long as the institution handling the report doesn’t care about facts or evidence, and is instead beholden to political pressure from the federal government to deliver findings of “guilty.”

Makes sense.