What happens when a woman gets raped at a university, the university fails to pursue any serious action, and the woman finds herself having to appeal to public opinion to get justice? She gets threatened with expulsion:
A University of North Carolina student says she faces possible expulsion for “intimidating” her alleged rapist by speaking publicly about her assault and how the school has handled it.
Landen Gambill, a sophomore at UNC, was part of a group that filed a complaint in January with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, alleging the university has routinely violated the rights of sexual assault survivors and failed to assist them in recovery after the reported abuse. Ten days after they filed their complaint, the graduate student attorney general sent a warning to Gambill that she may have violated the school’s Honor Code, Jezebel reports.
On Friday, Gambill got an email informing her that she was being formally charged with an Honor Code violation for “disruptive or intimidating behavior” against her alleged rapist, although she has never publicly named him. If the UNC Honor Court finds Gambill guilty, the punishment could be expulsion, suspension, community service or grade penalty, among other options.
In other words the University of North Carolina wants sexual assault victims to shut up because they’re making the university look bad. Their chosen method of dealing with this “inconvenience” is to issue threats of expulsion, suspension, coerced community service, or a reduction of grades against those who were victims of sexual assault.
Why would a university pursue such actions? Perhaps it’s because the University of North Carolina is operated by the government of North Carolina and feels its monopoly on force has been threatened by the persons who committed sexual assault. By threatening the victims the University may be trying to make a public statement that the sexual assaulters will not be allowed to encroach on the state’s monopoly on force unchallenged. Or, more likely, the University staff are morally bankrupt and more concerned about their public image than ensuring justice is served.