What BYU’s New Immunity Clause Could Mean for Sex-Assault Victims

George Frey for The Chronicle

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righam Young University garnered praise this week for announcing that it would grant students who report sexual violence immunity from being investigated for conduct violations that occur at or near the time of the assault.

Many saw the change as a big step forward for the Mormon institution, which faced sharp criticism this year when several students said they were investigated by the Honor Code office after they reported being assaulted. BYU’s Honor Code bans premarital sex, alcohol and drug use, and being in the bedroom of an opposite-gender student, all of which are common circumstances surrounding a sexual assault. Violating the Honor Code can lead to expulsion.

Amnesty is a contentious issue in Mormon circles. Some feel that such a policy should be a no-brainer, while others believe amnesty could give students an easy out when they violate the Honor Code. The goal of BYU’s immunity clause, university officials say, is to ensure that students who experience assault feel comfortable reporting it.

“If victims don’t report, we can’t help them, we can’t provide services, and we also can’t identify perpetrators,” said Julie Valentine, an assistant professor of nursing at BYU and a member of the four-member advisory council that drafted the new immunity statement. She said the group had reviewed about 80 amnesty statements drawn up by other colleges.

The statement still has to be approved by advisory councils representing students, faculty, and staff, though officials say they will begin following the new policy right away. It’s among nearly two-dozen changes that the council recommended related to sexual-assault prevention and response.

The group’s report also lays out a plan for disentangling the Honor Code office from the Title IX office, which investigates reports of sexual assault. The two units will be located in separate places and will not share information unless a student is found responsible for sexual misconduct, in which case Honor Code officials would step in to decide on a punishment.

“There were some perceptions about how the Honor Code office and the Title IX office shared information,” said Janet S. Scharman, vice president for student life at BYU and a council member. “If perceptions were keeping people from reporting, we wanted to eliminate anything that would get in the way of that.”

BYU will also hire a new full-time Title IX coordinator and create a victim-advocate position so that students who experience sexual violence will have a confidential adviser.

Still, some wonder whether the council has gone far enough. One key issue they cited was the fact that spiritual leaders — whom many students turn to first after traumatic experiences — were not covered by any of the changes. The report noted that some students told the council they’d had negative experiences when telling their bishops, or local spiritual leaders, about sexual violence.

When Colleen Payne Dietz, a 2005 BYU graduate, confided in her bishop about being assaulted, he considered the incident to be consensual sex and threatened to contact the Honor Code office, though he didn’t end up doing so. So, Ms. Payne Dietz asks, what about students like her?

The council’s recommendations, she said, “made it clear that anybody who came to the Title IX office would not be pursued by the Honor Code office.” But if a student first reports sexual assault to a bishop, she said, and the bishop believes the student violated the Honor Code, he could simply contact the Honor Code office and withdraw the student’s ecclesiastical endorsement without explanation. Students can’t attend BYU unless they have such an endorsement.

Madeline MacDonald, a former student who has spoken publicly about her experience reporting a sexual assault to BYU, would like the amnesty policy to apply to ecclesiastical endorsements as well as the Honor Code, so students can’t be punished for telling their bishop about an assault. Bishops should also be required to go through training on working with sexual-assault victims, she said.

Ms. Scharman said the group was only tasked with looking at university policies, not those of the Mormon church. “There’s a pretty clear division between the ecclesiastical side of things and the university side of things,” she said.

But the council decided to share with church officials its findings about spiritual leaders and how they were responding to sexual-assault victims, Ms. Valentine said.

The council’s drafted immunity statement includes language that concerns Kelsey Bourgeois, another former BYU student. Part of it reads: “The university will also offer leniency for other Honor Code violations that are not directly related to the incident but which may be discovered as a result of the investigatory process.”

As Ms. Bourgeois understands it, if a student reports being assaulted after drinking alcohol, and reveals that she also drank on two other recent occasions, that student could still face punishment for the earlier incidents. “It just leaves the door open for BYU to continue some of the behaviors that they’ve been doing,” said Ms. Bourgeois, who helped Madi Barney, also a former BYU student, write a petition in April calling for an amnesty clause.

That is not the provision’s intent, Ms. Valentine stressed. The policy calls for such violations to be handled in a way that allows students to get help — such as counseling or alcohol-abuse treatment — while remaining at BYU, she said.

Now BYU must focus on education and outreach efforts, Ms. Bourgeois said — making clear to students what their reporting options are, as well as which resources are confidential and which ones aren’t.

Ms. MacDonald transferred from BYU this fall and now attends the University of Utah. But she’s heard that some BYU students are upset about the new immunity policy because, in their view, it could encourage their peers to “cry rape” after they’re caught drinking.

Ms. MacDonald said she’s encouraged by BYU’s efforts to improve the climate for sexual-assault victims, although she’s concerned that the process of carrying out the changes could be delayed by bureaucratic obstacles.

She also has a blunt request for university leaders: “I want to hear them actually apologize.”

Sarah Brown writes about a range of higher-education topics, including sexual assault, race on campus, and Greek life. Follow her on Twitter @Brown_e_Points, or email her at sarah.brown@chronicle.com.