Jon Krakauer’s new book, about several sexual assaults committed by students at the University of Montana, has plenty of bad actors, including some local police officers, county prosecutors, defense lawyers, and, often, the citizens of the football-crazed City of Missoula, Mont.
With few exceptions, however, the university’s staff is not among them. Even the title of the book — Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town — takes the focus off the university, which agreed in 2013 to overhaul how it handles sexual misconduct after a broad investigation by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education.
But the incidents that led to the federal intervention, and Mr. Krakauer’s book, have had a lasting impact on the campus. Nearly two years after the university agreed to change course, students and staff members alike generally credit the heightened efforts to assist survivors of sexual violence and prevent rape and sexual harassment.
Christine Fiore, an associate professor of psychology who has helped design the university’s online training for students as well as a campuswide survey on sexual assault, says the biggest improvement has been greater awareness of the problem on the campus and across the city. “What I think is different is the level of communication among all of us that do this work,” she says.
Improved oversight, though, has not repaired the university’s reputation or convinced everyone that sexual assault was a serious problem. Enrollment has declined more than 13 percent since the 2011-12 academic year at Missoula, the flagship of the University of Montana system — a drop that many blame on negative publicity from the extensive media coverage of the sexual assaults.
Yet people on the campus and in the city remain split between those who support the changes and those who resent them, says Meagan McKay, a senior who helps run the Women’s Resource Center at the university.
“The Department of Justice coming in was a fantastic thing,” she says. “The campus environment is definitely altered.”
“There were positive effects,” she adds, “but it also divided the campus.”
A Dark Period
The book, released on Tuesday, details the circumstances surrounding several alleged sexual assaults that took place in Missoula from 2010 to 2012. Over nearly 350 pages, Mr. Krakauer chronicles the many failings of local law-enforcement officials in investigating and prosecuting sexual-assault cases. Two particularly contentious cases involved members of the university’s football team, the Grizzlies.
Beau Donaldson, who had played running back, agreed to a plea deal in 2012 for the 2010 rape of a young woman — a student at Eastern Oregon University — who had been his childhood friend. Mr. Donaldson was sentenced to 10 years in prison, though he may be eligible for parole sometime this year, according to the book.
But Jordan Johnson, a former starting quarterback for the Grizzlies, was found not guilty of rape by a jury in 2013. He had been accused of raping another young woman, a junior who was enrolled in the university’s school of pharmacy, in 2012.
Mr. Krakauer assails the police and prosecutors for promulgating antiquated myths about rape and often discounting the stories of the victims. By contrast, he portrays the university’s former dean of students, Charles Couture, as taking a hard line against the accused rapists and leading initially-successful efforts to expel both of them.
Mr. Johnson’s expulsion was reversed after he appealed the campus’s decision to the state’s commissioner of higher education.
Mr. Krakauer sued the commissioner for access to records of Mr. Johnson’s appeal and more information about the commissioner’s role in overturning the expulsion. A state district court ruled in September that providing that information would not violate federal laws protecting students’ education records. The commissioner appealed to the state’s Supreme Court, which has not yet ruled on the matter.
‘Inconsistent and Inadequate’
Beyond that, however, Mr. Krakauer makes relatively little mention of the university’s role in dealing with sexual misconduct, beyond noting that before the 2013 agreement with the federal agencies, “its policies for handling sexual-assault allegations were confusing, and occasionally contradictory.”
In particular, he writes, campus staff members and police officials did not consistently report incidents of sexual assault to the city police, who are responsible for investigating campus crimes that could be charged as felonies. “These mistakes were corrected quickly once they were recognized,” Mr. Krakauer concludes.
The book’s lack of attention to the university’s role and policies is problematic, says Alexandra Brodsky, a Yale law student and co-founder of the group Know Your IX, which advocates for stronger enforcement of Title IX, the federal law that forbids gender discrimination in education.
Students’ complaints to the Education Department about how colleges deal with sexual misconduct generally have little or nothing to do with how cases have been handled by the police, Ms. Brodsky says. “That’s not where the action is on most campuses,” she says.
In fact, the problems at Missoula were extensive, according to the 2013 letter from the Justice and Education Departments. Those problems included “inconsistent and inadequate” definitions of sexual harassment, a student population unaware of or confused about how to report sexual misconduct, and a lengthy grievance process that emphasized the accused student’s due-process rights while largely ignoring the rights of the alleged victims.
The letter, which also acknowledged several changes that the university had made to remedy the problems, came with a settlement that the institution signed. In that settlement, the university agreed to many more changes, such as hiring an “equity consultant,” developing Title IX training for all faculty and staff members, tracking all reports of sexual misconduct, making students more aware of its policies, and conducting an annual survey of students’ familiarity and comfort with the grievance process.
The changes, including those made before the agreement with the federal agencies, have led to more reports of sexual misconduct to the University of Montana’s Title IX coordinator, says Lucy France, the system’s general counsel. “There’s more awareness, so there’s more reporting, and we want to see that,” she says.
Faculty members, especially, have embraced the new requirements and training, she says. “Telling faculty what to do is always a challenge, but the majority are now telling us they want more information,” Ms. France says.
Culture Shift?
Have the university’s actions had a significant impact? That’s still up for debate, both in Missoula and across the country.
Ms. Brodsky says the agreement between the university and the federal agencies was a watershed moment. “It’s the first time we saw the Education Department taking seriously its mission to enforce Title IX,” she says. Subsequent agreements with colleges, she says, have evolved to include more far-reaching requirements, such as mandating that colleges repay students for the financial costs that come with surviving a rape.
But while the University of Montana agreement was held up as a “blueprint” for resolutions with other colleges, that was “perhaps more hype than reality,” says Kent D. Talbert, a lawyer who served as general counsel at the Education Department from 2006 to 2009.
The agreement has set an unwelcome precedent, he says, by extending the federal government’s oversight through informal guidance instead of a formal rule-making process that requires public notice and an agency hearing. “With these resolutions, you have them pushing the law to the maximum extent to cover every little detail of what an institution should be doing,” Mr. Talbert says.
On the Missoula campus, the effect of the new policies is both clearer to see and harder to gauge.
Gwen Florio, a former reporter whose articles at the Missoulian newspaper informed much of Mr. Krakauer’s writing, says the university and city have “taken several steps to make sure you know where to go and who to talk to” to report a rape.
“All over campus, there are signs everywhere about what to do if you’re assaulted, even in the restrooms in the bars downtown,” says Ms. Florio, who now teaches creative writing part time at the university.
But all the attention has not entirely changed the culture on the campus or in the city. “What is distressing to me is that after this came to light there was a lot of community outrage,” she says. “There is a pretty outspoken group that thinks these cases are bogus, and I think that’s pretty sad.”
Ms. McKay, of the Women’s Resource Center, says it’s not easy to determine if students feel safer on the campus or which policies will work in the long run. “Like other women, I take the standard precautions — hold your keys, walk quickly at night, walk in well-lit areas,” she says. “That stuff is so ingrained in us.”
“I don’t know if ‘safer’ is the right word,” she says, but students feel as if the university will follow through on their complaints, she says. “That doesn’t correlate with safety, but it’s a huge piece of the puzzle.”
Eric Kelderman writes about money and accountability in higher education, including such areas as state policy, accreditation, and legal affairs. You can find him on Twitter @etkeld, or email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com.
