A Wider Window on Campus Crime

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After David A. Shick died from injuries sustained during an alcohol-related fight at Georgetown University several years ago, his parents searched for answers. They hoped the university could provide them.

But when the Shicks wanted to represent their son in the campus judicial hearing examining his death, the university at first rebuffed them, citing campus and federal privacy rules. Eventually the university let them observe the hearing. But when the Shicks tried to learn the outcome of the proceedings, Georgetown officials told the parents it would release the results under one condition: that they sign a confidentiality agreement preventing them from telling anyone else, including their two other children.

The Shicks turned down the deal.

"I said, 'I can't sign this,' because there's no way I'm not going to tell them," recalls David's mother, Deborah A. Shick. "So they said, 'Then we can't tell you.'"

That experience could soon change for the families of other victims. A proposal before Congress would force all colleges, including Georgetown, to disclose the results of campus judicial proceedings involving violent crimes to the victims or their families.

More than a year and a half after David's death in February 2000, the family finally learned of the punishment the university gave to the student accused of throwing the punch that knocked David to the ground, where he hit his head. The accused student agreed to let the family have the information as part of the settlement of a civil lawsuit the Shicks filed against him.

The student was required to write a 10-page paper and attend alcohol counseling. A one-semester suspension was overturned on appeal, and the student, who was a member of the university's men's soccer team, never missed a day of classes or a soccer game, Ms. Shick says.

"It was so wrong," Ms. Shick says, "to tell a parent that you don't have a right to know what happened to a student that is responsible for your son's death."

In addition to confidentiality agreements, colleges sometimes release information about judicial outcomes only if victims sign a promise not to sue the institution, says S. Daniel Carter, senior vice president of Security on Campus Inc., a campus-crime watchdog group.

The legislation now before Congress could make that practice illegal and "will help ensure the rights of victims of violent crimes," Mr. Carter says. Colleges, he says, should not be "abusing their power by intimidating victims of crimes of violence to signing away any recourse they may have if they're unsatisfied with the results of a disciplinary proceeding."

For the Shicks, such a federal law could have helped them get answers sooner, and may have saved them about $100,000 in legal fees spent trying to learn the outcome of the judicial hearing, Ms. Shick says.

"We didn't even get to the grieving state until last year because we were still trying to get all the facts," she says. "We were powerless, and there was nothing we could do."

Colleges Divided on Measure

The proposal, part of a Republican-sponsored bill in the House of Representatives to renew the Higher Education Act (HR 4283), has divided college officials and higher-education lobbyists.

Some say the provision, which originally was a stand-alone bill pushed by the Shicks' congressman, is unnecessary because many colleges already release the information the legislation requires. But others who vehemently oppose the measure say it would interfere too much with the campus judicial process and create additional reporting requirements.

The law would disrupt a "system which has worked well through the years," says Cynthia A. Littlefield, director of federal relations for the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, which represents 28 institutions, including Georgetown.

Ms. Littlefield and other opponents of the legislation say campus judicial systems are designed to not only punish students, but to educate them at the same time. To best achieve that, the accused needs a zone of privacy.

"We don't deal in crime and criminals," says David W. Parrott, president of the Association for Student Judicial Affairs, an organization of judicial officers.

"Our concern is the constant comparison of student judicial systems with criminal processes," says Mr. Parrott, who is also dean of student life at Texas A&M University. "Student judicial processes, in general, are designed to enforce the rules of the university through education."

Aides to the House education committee and advocates for victims say the legislation's purpose is to standardize the release of information from college judicial proceedings. Though federal law allows institutions to release those results to crime victims, it leaves such disclosures up to each college. (Institutions, however, must release the information to victims of sexual assaults on campus.) The proposed change in federal law would eliminate the wide discretion that colleges now have.

Forcing colleges to disclose information on judicial cases is necessary to help victims move on and know if those responsible remain on campus, Mr. Carter says. "We don't believe that students should have any more privacy when accused of committing a crime than any other citizen," he says.

Some observers of campus judicial systems, however, question the need for the legislation. John W. Lowery, a professor of educational leadership and policies at the University of South Carolina, finds the bill problematic because it was inspired by the specific incident at Georgetown and is based on anecdotal evidence.

"A handful of anecdotes don't prove the kind of wide-ranging conspiracy that's being alleged" to keep judicial outcomes under wraps, Mr. Lowery says.

As it stands, the bill "doesn't give the institution the opportunity to make the determination of whether or not it is appropriate" to disclose the outcome of a specific judicial proceeding, he adds.

Education-Department Guidance

Gary M. Pavela, an expert in student judicial affairs and director of judicial programs at the University of Maryland at College Park, says most campuses, including his, already go above and beyond the federal law and "readily provide information about the outcome of disciplinary cases to the victim."

Other colleges, however, like Texas A&M University, release information on a case-by-case basis. And some institutions, such as Georgetown, keep all their proceedings confidential by requiring agreements like the one presented to the Shicks.

But in a letter last month, the U.S. Department of Education told Georgetown that it cannot require victims of sexual assault to sign such agreements as a prerequisite to obtaining the results of campus judicial hearings against their alleged attackers, given that federal law mandates the release of that information.

The letter came in response to a complaint filed with the department by a Georgetown student who said that she was raped and that she was required to sign a confidentiality agreement to learn her alleged attacker's punishment. The order from the Education Department applies specifically to disclosures in sexual-assault cases. Georgetown officials say that they will change their policy on disclosures in sexual assault cases to comply with the department's order.

The letter to Georgetown indicated that the department would issue "additional guidance" in the near future about disclosure in sexual-assault cases. That guidance, Education Department officials say, will come as part of a handbook on compliance with the Jeanne Clery Act, a 1990 federal law that requires colleges to report violent crimes and sexual assaults committed on their campuses or in the immediate vicinity of their campuses. The law's provisions on disclosure to victims apply only to sexual assault, as will the guidance in the forthcoming handbook, officials say.

If Congress approves the bill to renew the Higher Education Act with the provision on the outcomes of judicial hearings, however, it would significantly expand the list of crimes for which disclosure is required.

"What we're really talking about is requiring a whole new set of notifications that are expansive and an administrative burden," says Mr. Lowery of South Carolina.

Institutions that do not already notify victims routinely of hearing results will need to establish systems to administer the process, he says, including determining who actually must receive the information and what offenses, on a case-by-case basis, require the disclosure.

"If the rules aren't clear, then you need lawyer time or seasoned-administrator time to determine, case by case," if disclosure is necessary, says Ann H. Franke, vice president for national issues at United Educators, a college-insurance company.

But Mr. Pavela of the University of Maryland says he is not convinced that the cost would be much more than "a piece of paper or a postage stamp."

"It does seem to be bringing out a bazooka to swat a fly," he says. "But on the other hand, I can understand a family wanting to know the outcome, and it's a shame it takes legislation to do that."

Withheld From the News Media?

Even if the proposal becomes law, it is possible universities could still prohibit victims from giving the information to the news media or victims' advocacy groups. Experts say it is not clear if the proposal would permit or prohibit such releases and that clarification from the government would be necessary on that point.

Allowing release beyond the victims is problematic to some observers because they say it would threaten the judicial process.

"The greatest risk comes not with the disclosure to the victims," Mr. Lowery says, "but when these cases move to the court of public opinion." The proposal, for instance, would make available the outcome of all judicial proceedings in cases of violent crimes, even if the accused is found not to be responsible. Such students could have their reputations damaged simply by being connected with crimes through the release of campus judicial decisions, Mr. Lowery says.

But J. Matthew Shick, David's younger brother, who graduated from Georgetown in May and is now working to build Congressional support for the legislation, says that opening campus judicial records to victims, and even the public, could improve the campus justice system.

"If all universities are forced to disclose," he says, "eventually these schools will embrace a tough-on-crime policy instead of sweeping these things under the carpet. When the disciplinary hearings are secretive, you also have an injustice in the disciplinary actions ... the crime doesn't seem to meet the punishment."

Mark Goodman, executive director of the Student Press Law Center, agrees that the results of judicial proceedings should be made public.

"This change will ensure more public oversight of crime that occurs on campus," Mr. Goodman says. "If I were writing the bill, I would require the college to release the information to the public."

For the Shicks, the frustrations that they faced in the aftermath of their son's death linger.

"Here it is four and a half years later, and we're still picking up pieces," Mrs. Shick says. "And what happened to the kid? He wrote a 10-page paper."

Enactment of the proposal into law would mean knowing that some good came out of David's death, his parents feel, and that no other family would experience the frustrations they did.

"If we want David's life to have stood for something," his mother says, "we ought to get the law changed."