Tennessee Lawmakers Told Students Accused Of Crimes Don’t Have Enough Protections

A group of Tennessee lawmakers is weighing whether to get involved in campus sexual assault investigations, after hearing lawyers who question whether students accused of serious crimes have enough protections.

The state House of Representative’s Student Due Process Task Force met for the first time Tuesday to take testimony on whether public universities’ policies for adjudicating student misconduct respect the rights of the accused.

Knoxville attorney Keith Stewart was among the lawyers who testified. He’s represented University of Tennessee employees and students in a number of cases, and he says the panel that considers allegations of student misconduct isn’t up to the task of investigating claims of rape and other felonies.

“It’s not professional. I think the training is inadequate for the people conducting these hearings. I think that there is pressure from above, depending on who the accused is.”

The issue is a burning one on college campuses. Federal authorities
warned schools five years ago that if they don’t take sexual assault claims seriously, they risk losing funding. Several attorneys told state lawmakers that universities responded by lowering the standard of proof needed for expulsion.

But Mary Moody, general counsel for the Tennessee Board of Regents, says there’s a difference between expelling students and putting them in jail.

“There’s always going to be a case where we need to get a person off the campus as quickly as possible and prevent them from coming back,” Moody says. “So, the needs of the campus, in terms of discipline — student discipline — are different than the needs of the criminal justice system.”

Moody says an education should be treated as a property right and held to the ”
preponderance of evidence” standard that courts use in civil litigation.

Lawmakers have not decided whether to propose rules for Tennessee universities to follow. The task force is to meet at a later date to discuss whether legislation should be proposed. It would be debated when the next legislative session begins in January.

But several lawmakers made their views clear.

Oak Ridge Republican John Ragan, the task force’s chairman, says students’ liberty is at stake. On the other hand, Memphis Democrat Karen Camper says there’s no evidence that schools’ due process protections are insufficient — noting that there’s been only one case of a student successfully suing over his expulsion.