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 Sex Assault Victims Can Speak Out On Campus
 
 By Amy Argetsinger
 
  When Kate Dieringer learned that the fellow student whom she had accused of 
raping her in her first month at Georgetown University would be suspended 
from the college for a year rather than expelled, she was outraged. 
 
 "I wanted to tell everyone," she said. 
 
 Yet she couldn't: In order to learn the results of the young man's campus 
disciplinary hearings in the spring of 2002, she had signed a form promising 
not to share them with anyone, except for her parents and one close adviser.
 
 Such confidentiality pledges have been standard on many college campuses, 
and administrators have generally argued that they arenecessary to maintain 
the federally mandated privacy shrouding most student records.
 
 But in response to a complaint filed by Dieringer, the U.S. Department of 
Education told Georgetown this week that its policy violates a federal campus 
crime law. Campus safety watchdogs are hailing the order as a major victory 
for sexual assault victims at colleges nationwide. 
 
 The decision could encourage victims to shine a light into the often 
secretive workings of collegiate disciplinary systems -- and even warn fellow 
students about their alleged attackers, said S. Daniel Carter, senior vice 
president of Security on Campus Inc., a nonprofit group that monitors campus 
crime and judicial programs.
 
  "Colleges can no longer silence campus rape victims," he said. Asked if the 
decision would prompt victims to publicize details of accused students' 
punishments in campus media, Carter responded, "That is certainly what we 
hope."
 
 Others in higher education played down the significance and expressed 
concern about airing the results of disciplinary cases. In sharing the 
outcome of campus hearings with victims, "the desire here is to help an 
individual through a difficult time," said Sheldon E. Steinbach, vice 
president and general counsel for the American Council on Education. 
 
 "It is not designed as a hook for future litigation, nor for pillorying an 
individual," he said.
 
 The Department of Education's order apparently applies only to cases 
involving sexual assault, as governed by a 1992 law known as the Campus 
Sexual Assault Victims' Bill of Rights, which requires that victims receive 
information about disciplinary proceedings without any conditions or 
limitations. 
 
 The systems in place on most college campuses to handle matters ranging from 
drinking violations to cheating to assault are a perennial source of 
controversy, with both victims and the accused often complaining they are not 
treated fairly. 
 
 The particulars of those cases are often hard to assess, though, because 
most colleges conduct such actions under the veil of confidentiality. College 
officials say the secrecy -- including the nondisclosure agreements -- is 
rooted in their view that such proceedings are part of the students' 
education and therefore protected under the federal Family Educational Rights 
and Privacy Act.
 
 While there is nothing to prevent a student who is assaulted by a classmate 
from pursuing charges publicly through the criminal justice system -- 
regardless of whether the student also files a complaint on campus -- many 
choose to seek action only through the confidential college disciplinary 
channels. 
 
 That was the route chosen by Dieringer, seven months after she alleges she 
was assaulted by an older student in September 2001. She said the man 
separated her from friends and pulled her into his apartment after a night of 
heavy drinking.
 
 Dieringer also alleged that the man, who was at the time serving as an 
official adviser for new students, might have drugged her. 
 
 According to documents from the Department of Education, a Georgetown 
hearing board -- composed of students and faculty -- determined that 
Dieringer's account was credible and decided to punish the student with 
expulsion. However, the man appealed his case, and an appeals board reduced 
his sanction to a one-year suspension.
 
 Dieringer, a 21-year-old senior from Bridgeport, W.Va., said she felt the 
reduced punishment represented a failure of Georgetown's disciplinary 
process. "Obviously, the system was faulty and needed fixing," she said in an 
interview. 
 
 In an unrelated investigation prompted by a separate complaint from 
Dieringer, the Department of Education this spring determined that 
Georgetown's investigation and hearing did not reflect any discrimination 
against Dieringer or violate her rights. 
 
 But Dieringer, who still believes she was wronged by the process, complains 
that she was stymied from mounting a public critique of Georgetown's system 
because the nondisclosure agreement prohibited her from sharing details of 
the hearings or their outcome.
 
 Todd A. Olson, Georgetown's vice president for student affairs, said the 
university was using the nondisclosure agreements to try to uphold its 
students' rights to privacy. He said the school will change its policy to 
reflect the Department of Education's order.
 
 "It involves a difficult balancing act between accountability and 
confidentiality, and we'll continue to walk that line as carefully as we 
can," Olson said.
 
 Others see more sinister intent behind colleges' confidentiality policies. 
Bill Shaw of Shaker Heights, Ohio, said his 19-year-old daughter was 
compelled to sign such an agreement after being assaulted in April at a party 
at Bates College in Maine. 
 
 "The whole thing is an attempt to keep things quiet, to put her under 
duress," he said. Bates officials declined to comment. 
 
 Yet some in higher education say they don't believe the Georgetown order 
will prove a watershed for student victims. Most students involved in such 
cases don't want to publicize them, said Gary Pavela, director of judicial 
programs at the University of Maryland, which has not required nondisclosure 
agreements. And students who do want to publicize their cases were probably 
never deterred in the first place, he said. 
 
 "People who have a strong interest in the outcomes will go to the media," 
Pavela said, "and will not be deterred by some piece of paper."
 
   

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