NEWS
BY CAMILLA MORTENSEN
DROPPING THE BALL
UO basketball sexual assault case points to flaws in the system
PART II IN A SERIES ON RAPE ON CAMPUS AND IN THE COMMUNITY
W
eeks into interviewing University of Oregon
administrators, police, professors and more,
understanding where to go in order to report
a sexual assault is still a maze of offices and
administrators.
The school now has a hotline (346-SAFE) and a
webpage that direct students to still more possible
resources. But even if a student, traumatized after a sexual
assault, figures out who to report to, there’s no guarantee
that the bureaucracy at the UO will act, according to
several professors who have been struggling to get the
university to effectively prevent and deal with sexual
assault.
The UO recently suspended the three basketball players
involved in the sexual assault investigation, according to
the victim’s attorney John Clune. The suspensions are for
four years and could extend up to 10 years, he says, adding
that his client is relieved at the decision. The 18-year-old
woman intends to complete her degree at the UO.
UO spokeswoman Julie Brown confirmed Clune’s
information and adds, “In all reports of any misconduct
including sexual harassment, intimidation or violence, the
university works to protect and support the students
involved. Student safety is our top priority.”
UO professor Cheyney Ryan says, “I’m a white, male,
distinguished professor; I’m not used to being ignored.”
Yet Ryan, who is an emeritus professor teaching in the
Conflict and Dispute Resolution Program at the UO
School of Law, a senior fellow at Oxford University and a
senior fellow of the Carnegie Council, says his concerns
about sexual harassment and assault began in the 1990s
and his attempts to get the UO to reform the way it deals
with sexual assault began in earnest in 2009, but went
unheard.
“Under federal law, you have to have a policy,” Ryan
says. “If no one knows about it, that’s noncompliance.”
While rapes cases, like the one involving the basketball
players, are dealt with by local law enforcement, they are
also federal issues when they involve a public university.
The Jeanne Clery Act mandates that campuses collect and
report crime statistics and alert students. Title IX prohibits
discrimination on the basis of sex against any person in
education programs and activities receiving federal
funding, and sexual violence falls under Title IX. A school
that violates these laws is subject to losing federal funding
and to stricter requirements.
Carole Stabile, the director of the Center for the Study
of Women in Society at the UO, points out that she, like
other university employees, is a mandatory reporter and
must report if a student tells her she has been raped. UO
mandatory reporters must tell their supervisor or the Office
of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity.
“I believe in reporting. I don’t have a lot of faith in that
system,” she says. She sends students to Sexual Assault
Support Services, a local nonprofit that provides education,
outreach, advocacy and support to survivors of rape. The
UO did not sign its 2013-14 school year contract with
SASS until after the basketball rape allegations had been
reported.
Ryan echoes Stabile’s concerns and tells of several
cases, some involving faculty members, where students
were misinformed and reports went neglected by
administrators. He says, “It’s always the same old story.”
When students finally get heard by an administrator, they
get “sympathy” but no action, he says. There is a tendency,
Ryan says, for administrators to protect the institution.
Stabile and Ryan are among those who have tried to
call attention to the UO’s institutional flaws in dealing
with sexual assault. And because of their advocacy, they
are also people that students seek out for help after they
have been harassed or assaulted.
Stabile wrote a letter to UO President Michael
Gottfredson in January 2013 telling him she had become
increasingly concerned about the university’s handling of
sexual assault and sexual harassment cases, and that she
had observed a pattern “that suggests deep and serious
procedural problems — problems that, if not addressed,
will almost certainly erupt at some point.”
She told Gottfredson that senior administrators were
“too close to the problems or too defensive about ‘the way
we’ve always done things’ and lacked the critical
perspective to deal with the problems.”
Stabile says she learned months later that on the same
day she sent that letter, a student reported she had been
drugged and raped by a UO fraternity member. She says
she tries to talk about fraternities and athletics “in the same
breath” as rape-supportive subcultures.
Ryan says when that student who had been sexually
assaulted by a fraternity member tried to get help from the
university, she had to tell her story to seven different people
and still nothing happened. Ryan intervened, the student got
an attorney and, he says, the university has offered her a
settlement. “You get action if you go to a senior professor in
law who knows someone,” he says. The student has asked
that steps be taken so this won’t happen again.
The UO has appointed an eight-member external
Review Panel on Sexual Misconduct Prevention and
Response that includes former interim UO president Bob
Berdahl, who is said to have been instrumental in hiring
Gottfredson, Kevin Weiberg, who retired as the Pac-12
Conference’s deputy commissioner and chief operation
officer, and retired judge David Schuman. The committee
was appointed by Gottfredson, Vice President for Student
Affairs Robin Holmes and Athletic Director Rob Mullens
— who are also three of the people who have been widely
criticized for the UO’s handling of sexual assaults. ■
RAPE BY THE NUMBERS
In the year 2012 alone the cities of Eugene and Springfi eld together with the UO and Lane County had 168 rape reports. From 2009-2013 out of all the
reported rapes in those combined areas, only 19 were prosecuted and of those 11 resulted in conviction.
UO-related, including Portland campus Rape Reports
2009
2010
2011
14
86
17
16
TOTAL
2012
39
2013 & 2014 Stats N/A. Source: 2013 Jeanne Clery Act Campus Crime Report
Eugene Rape Reports
2009
73
2010
80
2011
78
2012
303
TOTAL
72
2013 & 2014 Stats N/A. Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reporting System
* the FBI changed its defi nition of rape in 2012. EW asked EPD for rape statistics but EPD says that due to a change
from the Uniform Crime Reporting format to Oregon National Incident Based Reporting System EPD will not be able
to provide comparisons with crime rates years before 2014.
Springfi eld Rape Reports
2009
22
2010
32
2011
118
25
2012
20
2013
19
TOTAL
2014 Stats N/A. Source: Michael Harman, Springfi eld Police Department
Lane County Rape Reports
2009
32
2010
44
2011
41
2012
37
2013
38
2014
205
TOTAL
13 as of May 2014
Source: Carrie Carver, Lane County Sheriff ’s Offi ce
Number of prosecutions for forcible rape by the Lane County DA’s offi ce:
Jan. 1, 2009 and Dec. 31, 2013: 19 Attempted forcible rape: 3
16 cases went to grand jury • 12 of the grand jury cases indicted. • 11 resulted in conviction, either via plea negotiation (7
cases) or via trial or plea to original charges (4 cases). •1 of the 12 charged cases was dismissed after charging as a result of
insuffi cient evidence.
Source: Alex Gardner, Lane County District Attorney
Number of contacts made by Sexual Assault Support Services (SASS) in 2013:
About 3,000
Source: BB Beltran, SASS
19
TOTAL
PROSECUTIONS
EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • JUNE 26, 2013
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