The University administration has moved to include an official written alcohol amnesty policy in the Student Code of Conduct. This policy, which the University already follows informally, allows students to report sexual assault without facing repercussions for violations of the University’s alcohol policy.
GUSA began publicly advocating last April to include within the Code of Conduct the granting of amnesty to sexual assault survivors for alcohol violations. The resolution passed in order to change the University’s disciplinary response to cases of sexual assault. “This resolution is a springboard to pushing the University more and more to address this issue,” said Sen. Pat Spagnuolo (COL ’14) when the resolutions were first passed.
This change to the Code of Conduct is great progress in fostering a culture of consent at Georgetown, however it is by no means the end solution to the conversation about sexual assault. As Kathleen Kelley (NHS ’14), a sexual assault peer educator, pointed out in an email to Vox Populi, “All the measures in the world aren’t useful if survivors still perceive the system as hostile and victim-blaming, and if perpetrators believe they can get away with it.”
Regarding cases of sexual assault, students should receive amnesty for alcohol violations, but in order to discourage a culture of victim-blaming, University administrators should not even consider the role alcohol played in the incident when evaluating the report of sexual assault. Moreover, GUSA has thus far not pushed for amnesty for sexual assault survivors in cases of drug violations in these resolutions, meaning the environment for reporting cases of sexual assault is still far from safe.
Additionally, the Office of Student Conduct predicted that this policy would be added to the Code of Conduct by the end of September. However, the vetting process that ensures all changes are compliant with the law, and the convention of adding changes to the Code at the beginning of each semester to reduce confusion, delayed the process by over six months. Both students and administrators would benefit from modifying the review process in order to allow policy changes such as this to be implemented more quickly.
If GUSA is to live up to Spagnuolo’s words, it must take this victory in stride and continue to push for the expansion of this policy to other substances and provide suggestions for an expedited review process for new policies. Until this policy becomes all-inclusive, its effects will remain limited by the possible repercussions to survivors from reporting sexual assaults to the administration and law enforcement.
