Reporting and prosecuting cases of sexual assault is nothing if not complicated, and UNC is no exception. But the University made an important step toward providing clarity and support to both survivors and the accused with a new policy approved by the Faculty Council on Friday.
The policy, which passed unanimously, dictates that a new body — most likely a board of specially trained administrators and students — will now handle sexual misconduct cases.
In the past, cases of rape and other forms of sexual assault committed by UNC students were processed by the same system as other Honor Code violations, if they were reported to the honor system at all.
This meant that the same court which generally deals with less serious offenses, like academic dishonesty and drug possession, was sometimes tasked with determining whether a fellow student was guilty of rape.
While the principle of peer-to-peer accountability underlying the system is admirable, it is fraught with complication when it comes to sexual misconduct.
Unfortunately, it was precisely the student-run nature of UNC’s honor system — in which we rightly take great pride — that presented the problem: the old system may have discouraged victims from reporting. A rape survivor could easily have been intimidated by the prospect of recounting his or her ordeal in front of a panel of students with whom they might have class the next semester.
In order to bring our university into compliance with national standards, the new policy also mandates that the burden of proof be shifted from “beyond a reasonable doubt” to “a preponderance of evidence,” meaning the board must deem it more likely than not that the alleged assault occurred.
We appreciate the honor system’s stringent usual standard of evidence, which conforms to an innocent-until-proven-guilty principle which many university discipline systems choose to bypass.
In practice, however, such a high burden of proof can feel tantamount to victim-blaming. The accused are of course also entitled to fair treatment, which they’ll continue to receive under the new system.
