Kasey Moyes, foreground, listens in at the Senate Student Conduct Committee meeting where it reviewed student procedures for revisions to the policies on May 1, 2015.
The University Senate’s Student Conduct Committee voted Friday to change part of the university’s interim sexual misconduct procedures regarding the minimum age of a support person and the case review process.
The interim procedure, approved by university President Wallace Loh on Oct. 13, permits each party in a sexual misconduct case to be assisted by a “support person,” which is defined as a nonparticipant 18 years old or older “who can provide emotional, logistical, or other kinds of assistance,” to one of the parties.
However, the senate committee voted against the age requirement with two in favor, three opposed and one abstention.
Rachel Patterson, a sophomore plant sciences major and committee member, led the argument to change the language, bringing up the hypothetical situation of a 17-year-old best friend who would not be allowed under the previous language.
“I just wouldn’t want it to deny people the opportunity to bring in someone very important to them that they feel would be an important support person,” Patterson said.
Gideon Mark, a business professor, voted against this change and said he sees the change as a way to let anyone in the meeting.
“The Committee’s vote opens the door for children — even young children — to function as support persons, whereas the draft procedures had set a minimum age of 18,” Mark wrote in an email. “I can’t see how this change benefits anyone.”
The interim procedure also called for the a student review committee to meet separately with each party involved with the case in closed sessions. During these meetings, the committee chair would question the party or witness in attendance.
The senate committee eliminated that aspect of the procedure from its draft, which will be presented to the Senate Executive Committee for review by the end of the fall semester. With SEC approval, the proposal would then go to a full senate vote before reaching Loh’s desk for approval.
The senate committee’s recommendation draft states that the standing student review committee in sexual misconduct procedures should only consider cases contested by either party and that the committee chair can only discuss impact statements privately with each party.
The student conduct committee voted 5-to-1 to eliminate an appeal process added in an earlier draft and unanimously supported the interim policy’s current language regarding cross-examination. Both of these decisions aligned with the university’s interim procedures.
The specific appeal process voted down would have allowed those who felt as though weak evidence led to an unjust punishment or that the punishment was unduly harsh to appeal the decision.
Mark said he was not satisfied with the arguments presented to remove these grounds for appeal.
“Both of these grounds are available in appeals in other kinds of cases at the University of Maryland – for example, they are available grounds for appeal in academic integrity cases,” Mark wrote in an email after the meeting. “ I don’t see why parties should have fewer available grounds for appeal in a sexual misconduct case than in an academic integrity case.”
While these “arbitrary, capricious and disproportionate sanctions” grounds for appeal are used in other processes, Catherine Carroll, Title IX coordinator, argued that sexual misconduct cases are drastically different than other procedures in which these sanctions could be used, such as academic integrity cases.
“[This process is] just fundamentally different; we’re talking about sexual violence; we’re not talking about cheating,” Carroll said. “So the amount of expertise that is going into this changes the nature for what we have grounds for appeal on.”
The committee did leave some grounds for appeal in the new draft, including procedural error, new evidence and substantive due process, which also follow the university’s interim procedure.
The senate committee unanimously voted to echo the interim procedure’s current language regarding cross-examination, in which each side can propose questions to the chair of the student review committee to be asked of the investigation or investigator only.
At the meeting, Mark said the other party should be permitted to attend the questioning in an effort to improve the process’ transparency. He also advocated for each party to be permitted to submit questions to the review committee chair for the other party. This would be a change from the university’s interim procedure, but the senate did not vote to include this in its draft.
“Whenever the SRC is questioning either party, the other party should be free to attend if they want. If they aren’t allowed to attend, I don’t see how that’s transparent,” Mark said.
