Website design By BotEap.comMost college students are between the ages of 18 and 22. By most legal standards, they count as adults.

Website design By BotEap.comHowever, college is often a time of transition, as students navigate new responsibilities and freedoms. This raises the question: How much liability should the college or university face when students make mistakes, or commit crimes, outside of the classroom?

Website design By BotEap.comSlate columnist Emily Yoffe recently reignited a longstanding controversy when she suggested teaching college-age women that binge drinking dramatically increases the risk of sexual assault. Critics accused Yoffe of blaming the victims and argued that we should focus on teaching students, especially young people, not to rape their peers and ensuring that those who do are punished. Yoffe’s defenders countered that we live in an imperfect world, so it is irresponsible not to educate young adults about the risks associated with their behavior.

Website design By BotEap.comA journalist, however, rephrased the question. Keli Goff of The Washington Post wrote of the controversy: “Well, here’s another idea. How about blaming the universities?” (1)

Website design By BotEap.comGoff’s column posits that universities have often turned a blind eye to excessive underage drinking on campus, and have faced no real pushback for doing so. She also discusses a Title IX complaint that seven women filed against the University of Connecticut, alleging that the university failed to properly handle their reports of sexual assault. (Four of them, along with a fifth plaintiff, also filed a federal lawsuit against the school.)

Website design By BotEap.comGloria Allred, the attorney representing both the seven women in the original Title IX complaint and the five plaintiffs in the lawsuit, spoke to The Post and declined to comment on the role of alcohol, if any, in the assaults. of your clients. However, she commented more generally, saying, “I think there is a correlation between alcohol abuse, especially among minors, but not limited to minors, and injury, victimization, rape against students.” (1)

Website design By BotEap.comRegardless of whether UConn adequately addressed the complaints made by these particular women, there have been many widely reported cases in which students (usually, but not always, women) offer specific and highly credible accounts of the difficulties they faced when seeking protection. or fairness, or both, from administrators who seemed to simply wish whistleblowers and their complaints would just go away. I have no doubt that there is a serious problem in the way that universities handle reports of abuse, both sexual and non-sexual.

Website design By BotEap.comBut Goff’s column goes further, suggesting that universities generally aren’t doing enough to curb binge drinking and minimize the risks of student sexual assault. Although she notes that some suggestions, such as raising taxes on alcohol, are beyond the control of schools, she still argues that universities could do more to prevent these problems before they arise.

Website design By BotEap.comHowever, here is the problem. To my knowledge, no one advocates restoring the voting age to 21. We still allow 18-year-olds to make binding multi-year commitments to serve in the military. An 18-year-old can go to prison for having sex with someone more than a few years younger. And even those under 18 can be prosecuted as adults for a wide range of crimes.

Website design By BotEap.comSo why are universities responsible for elections, especially off-campus elections, of students 18 and older?

Website design By BotEap.comSexual assault is a serious crime and it seems to get more serious by the day. Parents of young adults, college-going or not, need to have an equally serious conversation with their children about unintended consequences. No means no, and making any assumptions to the contrary can ruin your life. Putting yourself in a situation where you can’t say no, or where you are among people who may ignore your wishes, is dangerous and can be devastating. Both of these messages can be applied to any gender, despite the fact that most of what we hear mainly relates to boys in the first instance and girls in the second.

Website design By BotEap.comWhat responsibilities should universities have? They must provide reasonable security within their premises, of course, including respectful and thorough monitoring of any reported crimes. Schools are also, or should be, responsible for reporting crimes of all kinds, sexual and otherwise, to the proper authorities, cooperating with any subsequent investigations, and certainly never hindering them. That means making evidence and witnesses freely available.

Website design By BotEap.comUniversities would be better off dropping the pretense that a campus should be an island of law enforcement, subject to its own surveillance rather than that of the jurisdiction in which it resides. Administrators fearful of bad publicity may prefer to close ranks against allegations of wrongdoing. However, taking such a course will not only serve your students poorly, but may also open up schools to bigger scandals down the road.

Website design By BotEap.comAnd, of course, universities must take any allegations of assault and harassment seriously. In many ways, a school functions as an employer, and that model should guide how reports of crime are handled. A student who violates school policies, such as those related to underage drinking, should face the same penalties as an employee in the workplace: that is, if the violation is serious enough, the loss of his place in that organization. If a student engages in a sexual assault or other serious crime, schools should call police and prosecutors, not college presidents and presidents. School administrators are not law enforcement officials, and we should not expect them to be.

Website design By BotEap.comLawyers like Allred have a lot to gain, both from a publicity and compensation standpoint, by filing lawsuits that blame the universities. The rest of us, however, should focus on more reasonable expectations of what a university can do and reject this effort to put another set of hands in the pockets of the tuition-paying public.

Website design By BotEap.comFountain:

Website design By BotEap.com1) The Washington Post, “Should Universities Be Liable When Excessive Alcohol Consumption Leads To Rape?”