Under federal and public pressure, colleges are building courtlike systems to resolve students’ reports of sexual assault. Yet activists driving the movement keep calling attention to how campuses fail them. Maybe the problem isn’t how colleges run the process, say a few researchers and practitioners, but the process itself.
Administrators insist that campus adjudication is not criminal justice, though that’s how people tend to see it. That expectation vexes Mary P. Koss, a psychologist who has long studied sexual violence. “Your university offers the possibility of creating something that is better for victims,” says Ms. Koss, a professor in the public-health school at the University of Arizona. She’s on a mission to promote restorative justice, an alternative resolution — advisable only in certain cases — in which the offender accepts responsibility, listens to the victim, and works with the victim and a trained facilitator to try to make amends.
If that sounds too far-out, consider the frustration with the existing system, in which campus-appointed panels usually hear cases. Students who report sexual assaults often say the process retraumatizes them, in part with sensitive questions that challenge their credibility.
The adversarial model most colleges use doesn’t deliver the validation many victims of campus sexual assault are seeking, says Ms. Koss. The prosecutorial approach holds little chance of catharsis or closure. She and others want to help students pursue that.
“If healing were the goal, what would the process look like?” asks Kaaren M. Williamsen, Title IX coordinator at Swarthmore College. Restorative justice provides an answer, she says. It gives victims an opportunity to tell their own stories, observe offenders’ remorse, and have input into a resolution, according to a paper published last year by Ms. Williamsen, Ms. Koss, and Jay K. Wilgus, director of the Office of Student Conflict Resolution at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The paper cites research suggesting such things are part of what victims need.
For perpetrators willing to participate, the experience can be profound, Ms. Koss says. Someone might realize the influence of a bad peer group or the extent of alcohol problems, and reparations may include therapy or treatment. Restorative justice, the article says, promises “a way of better serving victims, preventing the recurrence of sexual misconduct, and enhancing compliance with Title IX,” the federal gender-equity law.
But despite the hopes of advocates who are meeting this week, the model is not exactly gaining traction. Expectations for colleges to serve as courts are entrenched. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has advised against mediation as a way of resolving sexual-assault allegations. Many alleged victims won’t sit in the same room as the students they’ve accused. And for those who face being branded as rapists, fairly or not, admitting responsibility may be a nonstarter.
Yet dissatisfaction with how colleges handle sexual assaults is running high. At such a time, a seemingly implausible proposal may still provoke useful questions.
‘Worthy of Consideration’
Some colleges are incorporating restorative justice into their conduct systems, finding that it helps victims heal and offenders grasp the consequences of their actions. But that’s mainly for offenses like disorderly conduct, vandalism, maybe harassment. No expert could name an institution using the practice for sexual assault.
The Office for Civil Rights, which is now investigating more than 100 colleges for possible violations of Title IX, certainly hasn’t encouraged it. “In cases involving allegations of sexual assault, mediation is not appropriate even on a voluntary basis,” the office declared in 2011.
But in their paper, Ms. Koss and her co-authors distinguish mediation, which assumes neutrality, from restorative justice, which requires one party to take responsibility. If both students agree to the process, their case may be resolved through a restorative conference, the paper argues. In a flow chart, it shows where else such an approach might be used: for setting sanctions when an accused student is found responsible, or for reintegration after a suspension.
The Office for Civil Rights declined to comment on the paper. But in a written statement, it recognized that each institution’s “grievance procedures will vary in detail, specificity, and components.”
Compliance aside, some victim advocates challenge the use of restorative justice for sexual assault at all. It lets perpetrators off easy, they say, and trivializes the offense. “I work with victims all day, and this is not something they’re asking for,” Lucy Berliner, director of the University of Washington’s Harborview Center for Sexual Assault and Traumatic Stress, told the National Journal. “This is a movement among academics who don’t like punishment or the criminal-justice system over all.”
The practice is hardly proven, but a small program showed some potential. A decade ago prosecutors in Pima County, Ariz., referred 66 felony and misdemeanor sexual-assault cases to Ms. Koss. More than six in 10 alleged victims offered the option chose restorative justice over traditional resolution, as did nine in 10 alleged offenders. Redress plans required psychological assessment, counseling, monitoring, and community service. Nearly all victims and offenders who participated said they considered the process a success.
But the program, called Restore, completed only 22 cases. When a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ran out, in 2007, Ms. Koss couldn’t secure another for that work. In a separate project, Colgate University and Franklin & Marshall and Vassar Colleges had planned to be pilot sites for a new model applying restorative justice to sexual misconduct, but after a meeting in 2012, campus officials and consultants decided not to go ahead.
With colleges legally obligated to resolve all reports of sexual misconduct, and students presenting a broad range of circumstances, some practitioners see a need for an alternative option. “We have a lot of students coming forward who want something, who want some kind of assistance, but they don’t want a hearing,” says Ms. Williamsen, of Swarthmore. “We don’t have much else to offer.”
She is preparing a study across a few institutions on what kind of resolution various members of the campus community are seeking.
Meanwhile, the Association for Student Conduct Administration included restorative justice in its recent “gold-standard practices” for resolving cases of sexual misconduct. “This option is especially worthy of consideration,” the group advised, “in cases in which the complainant says, ‘I just want him to know that what he did to me was wrong.’”
How much responsibility a student must accept to participate in a restorative conference is an open question. Campus officials, consultants, and experts may debate it this week, when about 20 of them gather for a meeting of a group called Prism, or Promoting Restorative Interventions for Sexual Misconduct. They wonder if they can successfully introduce the model on campuses, says Ms. Williamsen. “Is it possible, and what would it take?”
As institutions keep revising their sexual-misconduct policies, maybe the practice, always just as an option, will begin to appear, says Ms. Koss. In the 1980s she conducted the first big national study of campus sexual assault. Now she believes restorative justice is part of the solution.
An adversarial process doesn’t satisfy anyone, she says. “It’s only going to be a matter of time before people figure out it didn’t work out the way they hoped.”
Sara Lipka edits coverage of campus life and other topics. Follow her on Twitter @chronsara, or email her at sara.lipka@chronicle.com.
