Over the past year the Division of Student Affairs, along with GUSA, has critically reexamined Georgetown’s sexual assault policies, seeking ways to improve how sexual assaults are addressed on campus. As part of this effort, the administration added new, if insufficient, sexual assault education programs to NSO, and GUSA required its members to take these programs as well. Most recently, the administration plans to codify a currently de facto policy which protects survivors of sexual assault from being punished if alcohol violations are discovered during a sexual assault investigation.
Although this change goes a long way towards giving sexual assault survivors the level of care and legal protection they deserve, it does not go far enough. The new policy must be expanded to include amnesty for all substance violations, not just alcohol.
The policy as it stands deters sexual assault survivors from reporting their experience to the authorities because they believe they will be punished for drug violations. Even though amnesty for alcohol violations is a positive step, without official protection regardless of the circumstances of the assault, surviors will be less likely take a leap of fate and file a report.
Georgetown has made a good deal of progress in dealing with sexual assault and has many useful resources to offer survivors. The trauma caused by sexual assault requires immediate attention, and Georgetown has the capacity to provide this care. Students who know they will not be punished for unrelated crimes are freer to make the already difficult decision to disclose their assaults and gain access to the resources the University has to offer.
Drug violations pale in comparison to the seriousness of a sexual assault. The top priority in any sexual assault investigation should be aiding the survivor. Using an allegation of sexual assault as the genesis of a drug investigation not only represents skewed priorities, but is a betrayal of the student’s trust by the university.
Granting survivors amnesty brings university policy in line with GUPD official practice, which ignores evidence of criminal activity on the part of a survivor when that discovery is made during an investigation. This route insures investigators do not become distracted from the authority’s primary purpose: investigating a report of sexual assault.
Offering amnesty to sexual assault survivors for drug violations would help Georgetown be the force of justice it strives to be. Punishing survivors for drug violations does nothing to further and in fact impedes this institution’s commitment to the wellbeing of its students.
