Earlier this year there was sturm und drang regarding the manner in which rape victims have been treated by BYU, with the matter splashing briefly onto the national stage. On May 21, M* featured posts by me (The Relief Society might have handled it better…) and by Michael Davidson (lazy reporting on the BYU rape scandal).
I was pleased to note the story about BYU’s updated policies regarding Title IX led the most recent BYU Today e-mail, with a link to both the Q&A regarding the recommendations as well as a link to the pdf for the full report.
The main outcome was a recommendation that reporting victims, the accused, and witnesses should be granted amnesty from university discipline unless the health or safety of others is at risk.
Advisory Council Chair, Vice President Jan Scharman, explained how the amnesty for Honor Code violations would work:
First, to help address both factors previously mentioned and to encourage reporting, the names of victims or witnesses reporting sexual misconduct will not be shared by the Title IX Office with the Honor Code Office, unless at the request and written permission of the reporting student or if the health or safety of others is at risk. In some situations in the past, an Honor Code review could follow the Title IX investigation. This will no longer be the case.
Second, neither a reporting victim, the accused, nor a witness of an incident of sexual misconduct will be subjected to university discipline for an Honor Code violation reported to the Title IX Office occurring at or near the time of the reported incident – unless the health or safety of others is at risk. When a BYU student, who is accused in a sexual-assault case, is found responsible for violating BYU’s Sexual Misconduct Policy, the Title IX Office may share information about the accused student with the Honor Code Office for the limited purpose of allowing it to determine disciplinary action; in such cases, the Title IX Office will redact the names of complainants, victims and witnesses from all information before it is shared.
Our goal is to help students. Therefore, the university does reserve the right to initiate interventions, such as counseling or education, for those who have violated the Honor Code, including the reporting victim and witnesses. We found this is a standard practice at other universities as well.
I applaud the recommendations of the Advisory Council, as well as BYU’s decision to adopt all the recommendations. I also applaud BYU for beginning their effort to develop recommendations immediately upon public outrage on the matter. This was several months before the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) notified BYU it was opening an investigation based on the public statements made in May 2016.
And because I’m Meg Stout…
I find a correlation between what the BYU Advisory Council has recommended and what I think happened in 1842 in Nauvoo. As Emma Smith explained to the Relief Society on May 19, 1842, “the time had been when charity had covered a multitude of sins— but now it is necessary that sin should be expos’d— that heinous sins were among us—”
I think the amnesty being recommended by the Advisory Council is entirely consistent with what Joseph Smith and Emma Smith did upon learning of gross iniquities in the winter of 1841/1842. As Emma had suggested, there was a time when an amnesty had been granted to many, “charity had covered a multitude of sins.” But when it became clear in the spring of 1842 that there were still those perpetuating gross iniquities against the likes of Mary Clift, Matilda and Margaret Nyman, and Sarah Searcy Miller, it was deemed “necessary that sin should be expos’d” to protect the health and safety of others.
[Yes, I have a singular focus on Joseph Smith and Nauvoo. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, feel free to check out the digest of my initial posts on this history or download the June 2016 pdf of the resultant book, Reluctant Polygamist.]