A civil lawsuit filed against the University of Oregon by a student who said she had been raped by three basketball players has been settled, the university announced on Tuesday.
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A civil lawsuit filed against the University of Oregon by a student who said she had been raped by three basketball players has been settled, the university announced on Tuesday.
According to the settlement agreement, the woman, who remains unnamed, and her lawyers will be paid $800,000. She will also have her tuition, housing, and student fees waived for four more years. The settlement also states that the university has agreed to “continue to pursue a policy change requiring all transfer applicants to report any disciplinary history they have at their current or prior schools” and to allow the university to see it.
News of the allegations against the three athletes rocked the Eugene campus last year. Ten days after the rape was reported to have happened, The Wall Street Journal reported that one of the players was still being investigated for an alleged sexual assault at the institution he had transferred from, Providence College. The woman sued the University of Oregon and its basketball coach in January, asserting, among other things, that they should have known the threat posed by the transfer player. Dana Altman, the coach, was dropped from the lawsuit as a defendant on Friday.
“In approving this settlement, it is my hope that we focus our attention and considerable expertise on making our campus one on which all students will feel secure in the knowledge that they will be free from sexual violence,” the university’s president, Michael H. Schill, wrote in an email to the campus. He added that he does not believe any “coaches, administrators, or other university personnel acted wrongfully.”
The Register-Guard reports that the woman said in a statement that she was “glad to have this case behind me.” She added: “The response from the UO community has been remarkable, and I know that the increased awareness around these issues on our campus can only serve to help us.”
One other distinctive aspect of the Oregon controversy has been the university’s handling of the woman’s counseling records. In the lawsuit, she alleged that the university had pulled the records from her therapy sessions and handed them over to the general counsel’s office for use in the university’s legal defense. That claim sparked heated discussion about confidentiality and privacy in higher education.
