The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga has chosen a very unfortunate year to land itself -- through circumstances entirely due to its own unresponsiveness -- not once but twice under federal investigation of its handling of campus rape, sexual discrimination and sexual harassment.
UTC already was grappling with a federal probe into its handling of a 2014 campus rape allegation involving a member of the wrestling team. Now another complaint has been filed by more women who say the university mishandled a slew of sexual harassment allegations against another, older male student.
Beginning in October, several female students went to the University Women's Center to report that a male student in his 30s was harassing them before and after classes in the English department. They complained that they could see pornographic images on the personal computer he used during class, that he followed a female student to her car, that he verbally abused them and that he told his classmates he was carrying a knife. At least three professors also complained about his behavior. One teacher said she felt uncomfortable because of a comment he made about her appearance. Another canceled class meetings and moved his class online because he felt threatened. The students and faculty shared their story with Times Free Press reporter Claire Wiseman for a story in Sunday's newspaper.
The male student's defense was that he was exercising his right to free speech, and a university panel found that he had not violated the school's code of conduct. At the hearing, only one young woman's complaints were considered because one or another university official had "lost a sticky note" with the names of six students who complained.
This is a dog-ate-the-homework excuse from UTC. The names on the sticky note came from emails, so UTC should still have them. Couldn't UTC administrators look at those emails again and make another sticky note to contact the people involved? Better still, shouldn't university policy require that people trained as police and criminal investigators -- not school administrators and students, as happened here -- probe such complaints?
But it gets worse. When the one student whose case was heard appealed the ruling and tried to pursue Title IX violations against her classmate, UTC denied the request. So she took it to the next level -- the U.S Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which oversees the Title IX provisions that prohibit sex discrimination in education and specify how schools must handle instances of sexual discrimination, harassment and violence.
Her timing probably couldn't be better. This is the time that campus women all over the United States have found their voices. This is the time similar and controversial allegations at Vanderbilt and University of Virginia and -- yes -- UTC have made headlines, over and over.
Some of those campus women who found their voices in North Carolina also did some research and made a searing documentary that may cause campuses and university officials to never again turn deaf ears and tone-deaf attitudes toward student safety concerns.
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The documentary is called "The Hunting Ground" and it lays clear the smorgasbord of pervert opportunity that colleges offer sexual predators -- wittingly or unwittingly.
Jezebel.com, a blog aimed at women's interests, calls the documentary by two college rape survivors "an unrelenting indictment of the way American universities adjudicate sexual assault, by way of countless sobering testimonials from campus rape survivors who tried in vain to get their institutions to hear them."
"Variety" calls the film "a lacerating examination of college administrations' failure to acknowledge and grapple with sexual violence on campuses."
According to the film, only 2 to 8 percent of sexual assault reports are false. Yet a 2014 Huffington Post analysis found that fewer than one-third of reported sexual assaults ever result in expulsion.
Worse still, campuses have deliberately adopted a soft approach toward this problem: The Association for Student Conduct Administration is telling universities across the nation not to be "punitive" when handling campus rape. In fact, the ASCA tells schools not to even use the word "rape." Instead, call it "sexual assault." Here are other guidelines: Campus sexual assault hearings should be "educational" and "not punitive." And, the school's handling of sexual assault cases "should not mirror the criminal process."
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That sounds much better for wrestlers and football players than for Joe and Susie Student, doesn't it?
Of course, it also conveniently allows schools to administratively handle incidents and avoid or at least downplay things that might result in reports that will frighten away tuition-paying parents or bring on athletic shame.
But the more insidious consequence is that by silently condoning a culture of sexual harassment and rape, these blindly foolish rules convert our colleges into institutions of higher learning for sexual abuse.
In its report, the Huffington Post noted that college activists had gotten attention by members of Congress and the Obama administration, even prompting multiple pieces of federal legislation and a White House task force. But the effort then disappeared into the void known as Washington.
When lawmakers didn't step up, trade groups like the Association for Student Conduct Administration and consultants stepped in. On Facebook the ASCA bills itself as "the premiere authority in higher education for student conduct administration and conflict resolution."
UTC's first Title IX probe -- the case with the wrestler accused of rape -- is ongoing. In that case, the school initially ruled in the athlete's favor, then abruptly reversed its decision. The wrestler appealed, and a Chancery Court judge in Nashville approved an order allowing him to continue to take classes this spring, despite strong opposition from the university.
In the second case -- the one alleging sexual harassment --the older male student also remains in classes, even with some of the young women who complained. One of the women says he has now grown quiet. Meanwhile, school administrators are promising students they will re-examine the case.
That's nice, after all these months. But a real investigation would be preferable.