A Utah House member doesn’t want what happened to some BYU sexual assault victims to occur at state public colleges.
Rep. Kim Coleman, R-West Jordan, has introduced HB326, which says an alleged victim of sexual assault at a state institution of higher education can’t be punished under the school’s internal conduct rules for drug or alcohol violations – or other student conduct violations – for reporting a sexual assault.
“There is some amnesty here,” she told UtahPolicy, for minor offenses in what should be the greater good – prosecuting the offender.
It also says that university bosses will not automatically report the assault to law enforcement unless certain other circumstances are met.
In short, you shouldn’t find what happened at Brigham Young University happening at the University of Utah and sister public colleges.
The bill does not apply to private schools, so BYU, Westminster College, and other private higher ed institutions don’t fall under the proposed law.
Coleman said she actually started working on a serious of higher education free speech and other issues before the BYU incidents blew up in the media.
In some BYU cases, the female student reporting a sexual assault was herself investigated by the school’s Honor Code enforcers, and punished by the school, even kicked out of school.
“We don’t want a sexual assault victim” not reporting the attack, or a friend who witnessed the attack, not reporting the incident to school officials, just because there were drinking alcohol and underage or using illegal drugs, she said.
While Utah public colleges do have student honor codes, they are by no means as strict as those at the Mormon owned and operated BYU.
But the bill – and she believes this is just as important as the amnesty issue – also details when college officials can, and should, report an assault to the police.
The football player Torrey Greene’s alleged serial sexual assaults at Utah State University is a good example, she said.
Under her bill those assaults should have gone immediately to law enforcement, and when he traveled to other schools that information should have gone, too.
There is a right to privacy for women/students reporting such assaults, but that only goes so far. And some school administrators need the protection from reprisals that her bill will provide, she said.
