STAR 69: Few due process protections in new campus sexual assault policies.

At least two universities have recently released revised campus sexual assault policies, and, as expected, the new policies provide few due process protections for accused students.

The University of California-Berkeley and the University of Michigan announced new sexual misconduct policies this week. I’ll start with UM because its policy is much better — but still troubling — than UC-Berkeley’s.

UM’s new policy, a draft of which was released last September (the final will be released on April 6) does include some due process protections for accused students. Whether the school will actually provide them in individual cases or whether they will be provided adequately remains to be seen. (In schools across the country, such protections are rarely provided or lack usefulness.)

UM’s new policy refers to accusers and the accused as “claimants” and “respondents,” which removes the guilty-until-proven-innocent tone of usual policies where accusers are called “victims” or “survivors.” The school also allows accusers and the accused to have an adviser throughout the process, and this person can be an attorney; however, this adviser cannot speak on behalf of the students.

But there is something about UM’s draft policy that is frightening to due process advocates: The ability for accusers to request anonymity. This means the accused student might not actually be told who is making the accusation against him, which would severely hinder his ability to defend himself.

Disgraceful.