Kate Dieringer (NUR ‘05) makes an unlikely warrior, but that is exactly what she has had to become since her arrival at Georgetown three years ago. Tall and extremely fair with curly blond hair, she speaks like a kindergarten teacher, with a sweetly high-pitched voice.
Returning to campus after a semester abroad, Dieringer has been bombarded by changes, from new professors to a new New South. The biggest change however, is in Georgetown’s sexual assault policy, a change for which she is almost single-handedly responsible.
In July the Department of Education told Georgetown that it could no longer mandate that sexual assault victims sign a gag order if they wish to hear the results of their cases. Georgetown’s non-disclosure policy, written in the Student Handbook had stated that the complainant, the student filing charges, could only reveal the outcome of the University adjudication process to his or her parents and one trusted advisor. The DOE’s ruling is the result of a suit Dieringer filed with its Office of Civil Rights. Dieringer was not aware that such a policy existed until she was forced to sign one in order to learn the outcome of her hearing. Despite years of campaigning from a small but vocal group of students and parents, the DOE mandate served as Georgetown’s catalyst for change.
“They will know where they stand and I want to make sure you do too.”
Dieringer, then just beginning her sophomore year, read the e-mail on her computer screen. It was from S. Daniel Carter, Senior Vice President of Security On Campus, Inc., a non-profit organization that advocates for safer college campuses. It was the most comforting thing she had read during her nightmarish year-and-a-half at Georgetown.
Just two weeks into her first year, Dieringer reports that she was drugged and sexually assaulted by her friend’s new student orientation advisor. She told no one.
“I hid in my room in Harbin,” she said. “I went on ESCAPE and he was a leader. I stayed on the bus the entire time.”
Dieringer was too scared to tell her friends and too embarrassed to tell her family.
“He was even in my ethics class. The first day he talked about what made up his moral code. It was so disgusting, I had to switch out,” she said.
Secluding herself more and more, she was first too scared to go to parties, then the cafeteria. Crowds terrified her and she often cried out-of-the-blue. Deep down, she knew what was bothering her and, more importantly, that she had to do something.
She first contacted Carolyn Hurwitz, Georgetown’s Sexual Assault Coordinator at the time, and then Counseling and Psychiatric Services to begin therapy. That spring, she spoke up, reporting the incident to the University, something very few sexual assault victims do. The administration explained to her the options she decided to take action through the University’s Student Disciplinary System.
Faith in the System
Georgetown’s disciplinary system affects all undergraduates and graduates. It is designed to fit within Georgetown’s larger educational system, not to serve as a court of law.
“[The disciplinary system] is founded on the principles of fostering community, upholding the common good and respecting the individual,” the Student Handbook reads.
There are three classifications of violations, “Category A, B and C.” Sexual assault is classified as a “Category C” violation, the most serious. If a student is found responsible for a “Category C” violation, he or she can be suspended or expelled.
Before Dieringer’s case, Hurwitz, who served as Dieringer’s advocate and advisor during the process, informed Dieringer of Georgetown’s non-disclosure policy. Hurwitz told Dieringer that she would not be able to share any details of the case. At the time, the policy did not worry Dieringer.
“It seemed to be so objective and fair,” Dieringer said.
The hearing, however, did not run as smoothly as she thought it would. Dieringer said she was questioned more harshly than the respondent, the student facing the charges.
“They asked me things like why I was with him, why did I know him,” she explained.
She said that she felt as if she was the one on trial. “I’m always thinking about which was worse: being raped or the adjudication process,” she maintains.
At the end of the trial, Georgetown’s Director of Student Conduct, Judy Johnson, again told Dieringer of Georgetown’s non-disclosure policy.
“She said that I would be charged with ‘failure to comply’ and face serious repercussions if I broke it,” Dieringer said. “They told me they took FERPA very seriously.”
FERPA, the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, is intended both to allow students access to their disciplinary and academic files as well as protect the privacy of these records from others. Needing to know the trial’s outcome and whether she would ever have to face the respondent on campus again, Dieringer signed the policy without reservation.
The results were not what Dieringer had expected. She was horrified to learn that the University had originally expelled the accused student, but, after an appeal, the sanctions were reduced to a one-year suspension.
“He doesn’t deserve to be here,” she says now, through clenched teeth.
Because the student has since left Georgetown, Dieringer can confidently walk through campus. But at the time, Dieringer was terrified; she believed that Georgetown had let her down. The worst part was the fact that the respondent could return, and legally, she could tell no one about the proceedings, nor could she tell anyone his name.
While the administration does not necessarily contest Dieringer’s account of the adjudication process, they do not agree that it is the only account.
“It’s the norm when there’s an emotional process like this, there are different views of the process, with different ideas of what happened,” Georgetown’s Vice President for Student Affairs, Todd Olson, said.
Disillusioned
Dieringer returned to Georgetown her sophomore year frustrated with the administration and ready to withdraw from school. That October, in a last-ditch effort to be heard, Dieringer recounted her experiences, from the assault to her trial, in a personal essay that appeared in the Voice.
“How can I stay in a place that condones rape behind closed doors?” she asked in the piece. “I’m just afraid that neither you, nor any other students, will ever be deemed important enough by the University to get the justice you deserve.”
The paper was distributed Thursday, Oct. 24 and also published online. By 3 p.m., Carter had sifted through the mass of college newspapers online and e-mailed Dieringer.
“[The University] will know where they stand, what the law says, and what is within their power,” he wrote. “I want to make sure you do to.”
In his e-mail, Carter told Dieringer about the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, or the Clery Act, that requires colleges and universities to disclose information about crime on and around their campuses. At first, the law’s scope had been narrowed by both confusion about the statute’s requirements and its interaction with FERPA. As a result, the law was amended in 1992, adding a provision that schools must afford the victims of campus sexual assault certain basic rights. It was changed again in 1998 to expand the reporting requirements. Still, it remained unclear where FERPA’s protection ended and the Clery Act’s rights began.
“There’s a difficulty balancing between two goods, the confidentiality represented by FERPA and the accountability represented by the Clery Act,” Olson said. “We take both seriously.”
Kate Takes Action
Dieringer said that speaking with Carter “lit a fire” in her.
“I knew what I had to do,” she said with wide eyes and a sudden sterness.
Not long after, Dieringer filed a complaint with the DOE’s Office of Civil Rights.
“I feel that after reading information about disclosure to the victim in the Clery Act, that my rights have been violated, as have the rights of any sexual assault victim here at Georgetown,” she wrote.
Dieringer filed her complaint on March 2, 2003. While the DOE did not release its decision until July 16, 2004, Dieringer did not have a difficult wait. She said that soon after filing her complaint, James Moore, a Federal Student Aid Officer from the DOE, contacted her. She says he called on behalf of the DOE to tell her that the case would go through some bureaucracy, but the DOE would ensure she was given justice.
“He said he was sorry that I had been so mistreated,” she said.
When she read the DOE’s decision, she was not surprised and very happy.
The decision, addressed to Georgetown President John J. DeGioia, stated that Dieringer did not violate any provision of the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act. “The Clery Act does require access to the outcomes of sanctions information without condition,” it stated.
The decision also required that Georgetown change its disclosure policy within 30 days, or face sanctions. Violators could now face $27,500 per violation in fines and the possible loss of eligibility in federal aid programs.
Acting in “Good Faith”
“We have followed the Department of Education’s instructions, and look forward to continued guidance from them in balancing the goals of FERPA and the Clery Act,” Olson said.
Because complainants are no longer conditioned by a non-disclosure policy in sexual assault cases, Carter said that Georgetown has complied completely with the DOE’s decision. When Carter initially contacted Dieringer, he was already familiar with Georgetown’s non-disclosure policy. In a 2001 e-mail to Johnson, Carter informed the university of the 1998 amendment to the Clery Act which, he wrote, “Permits institutions of higher education to release the final results, which includes the name of the accused, of disciplinary actions against students found to have violated school rules in connection with a crime of violence.”
When questioned on Georgetown’s previous position, Johnson said, “All I can say is that we were acting in good faith with our understanding of the law at the time.
“We were not found at fault [in the DOE’s ruling]. There was a need for clarification,” she added.
Supporting Johnson’s statement, the DOE’s decision reads that “Although this determination finds that the University is in violation of the Clery Act, the Department also acknowledges that the complaint and the University’s response raised issues of genuine confusion in the higher education community.”
Because of this lack of clarity, the DOE did not impose any fines upon Georgetown.
“This is the only case I’m aware of where someone was asked to sign a confidentiality agreement that she shouldn’t have been,” David Bergeron, Director of Policy and Budget Development at the DOE, said. “I would fully expect that there are others though. Right now we are creating a handbook to make sure all the guidelines are reflected. They already had been, but now we are making sure they are diseminated more broadly.”
Students Respond
Carter’s contacts aside, numerous on-campus groups started to pressure the University to change. One such organization, Advocates For Improved Response Methods For Sexual Assault compiled a report during winter break of the 2002-03 school year which asked, “To grant survivors of sexual assault and other violent offences the right to disclose information about their cases,” and strongly urged Georgetown to modify its policy.
AFIRMS member Liz Trautman (CAS ‘05) said, “A copy was sent to everyone with any decision making ability at Georgetown.”
“Broadly, we have worked collaboratively with students over the past two years to review and strengthen a variety of policies and programs that relate to sexual assault,” Olson said.
Other school administrators believe the University handled both the criticism and Dieringer’s case appropriately.
“What I think the University has done especially well is that we have really taken students concerns seriously, worked to balance FERPA and the Clery Act well, and continued to handle the goals of campus respectively,” Laura Cavender, Georgetown’s Director of Media Relations, said.
Georgetown Doesn’t Stand Alone
“It’s hard to say ‘this is wrong,’” William & Mary senior Samantha Collins said. “But doing so makes it easier for other people. It gives them courage.”
In Carter’s first e-mail to Dieringer, he cited the example of Collins, a student in a similar situation. Two years ago, Collins had her own trouble with University policy during her sexual assault trial.
“The case was cut and dry,” Collins said in an interview. “It was clear it was a rape case.”
The night before the adjudication process, Collins said that a dean told her that she would receive an underage drinking violation because her statement said that she had “passed out” before the sexual assault took place.
“How can the victim feel supported with that?” she asked.
After the adjudication process, Collins learned that the respondent would be suspended, but could re-apply one year after the incident.
“Something seemed very wrong,” she remembered. “It took so long to get him off campus, but he could get back so quickly.”
Furthermore, she said the school told her that she could not share the outcome or details of the case.
With the support of the student association, Collins hung a large poster on campus, showing a timeline of the evening of the incident that included basic facts and the respondent’s name. After the school removed the poster Carter contacted Collins and the University and told them that forcing Collins to remove the poster was a violation of the Clery Act. She soon received a letter of apology from W. Samuel Sadler, the Vice President for Student Affairs, that encouraged her to re-hang the poster, an offer she declined.
“I think in the minds of the school, nothing tarnishes it’s image more than public knowledge of rape,” she explained. “They think it is in the best interest of the school [to keep things silent], but they tarnish their names even more and make it seem like they are against the victim.”
Larger Than Sexual Assault
Georgetown may have reformed its sexual assault policy, but the school’s previous non-disclosure policy still stands for all other cases of violent crime. According to Olson, the University interprets the DOE’s decision as ending non-disclosure for sexual assault, but not for any other cases.
“That confidentiality is an important aspect of making our student conduct system work,” Olson said.
Nevertheless, Georgetown may have to change its policies if The Shift Honesty in Campus Justice Act, a bill that will end non-disclosure policies for all cases of violent crime, is enacted by Congress.
Just like Dieringer’s efforts, this legislation is inspired by Georgetown’s non-disclosure policy, although not by a Georgetown student himself, but rather by his family. David Shick (MSB ‘01) died in February 2000 due to injuries sustained in a fight in the parking lot behind Lauinger Library. The D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the death a homicide. Shick’s family said they did not want the U.S. Attorney’s Office to file charges, but rather believed it was a matter for the University’s adjudication process to handle. Like Dieringer, the Shicks were initially optimistic about the school’s system, but were soon disillusioned. David’s mother Debbie Shick said, in an interview, that the school refused her request to serve as the complainant in the case and repeatedly postponed the hearing.
At the end of the case, the Shicks were horrified to learn that, if they signed the policy, they could not disclose the respondent’s sanctions to David’s younger sister or brother, a Georgetown student at the time. They did not sign the agreement, and Georgetown withheld the results. Dissatisfied, the Shicks claimed they spent over $100,000 on a civil suit against the student found responsible, ending in a settlement which allowed the Shicks to access his records.
What they learned horrified them. Although the respondent was found responsible for a “Category C” violation, as well as other lesser “Category A and B” violations, he was sanctioned with a conditional suspension for the fall semester and other punishments, such as a 10-page reflection paper. After an appeal, the University Appeals Board postponed his suspension, and the respondent graduated in 2002 without serving his suspension.
“The University did all this to keep the case quiet,” Shick said. “They knew our financial situation. We had filed for financial aid. They didn’t think we would spend all that money. They didn’t think we’d fight.
“When I saw Kate, I couldn’t stand that they were doing it again. If these cases affected one individual, I could understand Georgetown’s policy. But this is not an individual. It affected me, our family, David’s girlfriend, a lot of people. The responsible student was still on campus and we had a right to know. The campus had a right to know.”
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“Standing here now, I feel even more liberated and encouraged to seek change,” Dieringer said. “I saw all this injustice and unfair treatment happening first to me and then to so many others that I felt like throwing a tantrum. So I did, in the form of filing complaints, speaking with media outlets and working with other motivated activists on campus.”
She paused a moment. Calming herself down, she apologized: “I feel kind of possessed and I just start going like a maniac and need to be stopped. Forgive me.”
But now, at least, nothing can stop her from speaking out.
