Handling of rape claim at Brown raises questions

[Liberal_in_LA]

Handling of rape claim at Brown raises questions

William McCormick III crossed the wrought-iron gates of Brown University on a full scholarship, a champion wrestler from Wisconsin who expected four years at an Ivy League institution known for educating generations of bright and enterprising minds.

He lasted mere weeks.

In September 2006, he was accused of stalking, harassing and ultimately raping a female acquaintance — allegations he says are false. The accuser was a third-generation legacy student who, when first reporting trouble with McCormick, also mentioned that her father was an "alum and a big supporter of Brown."

The day after the rape allegations were made, McCormick was called into a meeting with administrators, barred from campus and put on a flight home pending a disciplinary hearing.

The following month, McCormick was gone for good.


Before the hearing, he signed a confidential agreement — under pressure, he says, from a lawyer for the accuser's family — in which he agreed to withdraw from Brown. In exchange, the accuser agreed to let the matter drop.


A Brown administrator agreed to reflect on his transcript that he had withdrawn for "medical reasons" but also told him he was ineligible for readmission, even though he had never been found responsible for rape. McCormick transferred to Bucknell University, which says he's a student in good standing.


The school allowed the matter to be closed through a private contract instead of a traditional fact-finding hearing that could have vindicated McCormick or established that an assault had actually occurred. The arrangement was meant to provide a tidy outcome to a dispute fraught with emotion and wildly divergent accounts.


The lawsuit alleges that administrators failed to adequately investigate the accusations, and permitted a blameless student to be railroaded from campus to placate a major donor.


There is another possibility, though — that Brown administrators deemed the allegations credible but allowed the complaint to be quietly disposed of, freeing someone accused of rape to wipe the slate clean as he transferred to another school.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/05/31/national/a091508D96.DTL#ixzz0pXXY68mX