ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 21, 1996 TAG: 9601220065
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETTY HAYDEN STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Above
CHRISTY Brzonkala isn't asking just for money in her lawsuit against Virginia Tech and the two football players she says raped her in the fall of 1994. She's also seeking an injunction forbidding the university from internally handling sexual assault cases ever again.
Brzonkala says reserve linebacker Tony Morrison and reserve split end James Crawford raped her Sept. 22 in their dorm room.
Because she didn't decide to press charges until April - seven months later - she couldn't provide any physical evidence.
With few options open to her, Brzonkala went to Tech's University Judicial System, where either administrators or students consider cases according to the defendant's wishes.
Morrison and Crawford chose to have their cases heard by administrators, who decided there wasn't enough evidence against Crawford, but found Morrison guilty of sexual misconduct.
Morrison has said whatever happened between him and Brzonkala was consensual.
After Morrison appealed and got a second hearing, he was found guilty only of using abusive language. He received a two-semester suspension.
Brzonkala's mother, Mary Ellen, says the family would have been satisfied with that outcome, because without physical evidence Christy Brzonkala didn't think her case would have a chance in criminal court.
But Provost Peggy Meszaros' decision to reduce Morrison's suspension to probation made it hard for family members to put the the incident behind them.
"I can't just let it go," Brzonkala said in November. "He's living his life like he wants to, and I'm suffering."
She broke her public silence after Morrison was allowed to rejoin the football team. She read about Morrison's return in a newspaper story.
Brzonkala's decision in August to go public with her allegations and the details of the university judicial hearings offered a rare peek behind the normally closed doors of student disciplinary hearings.
Universities use a federal law known as the Buckley Amendment to keep such proceedings private, unless the accused student agrees to an open hearing.
The issue of public access to campus court hearings has been challenged successfully in Georgia, and the debate soon may reach Congress. But that's not the only reason attorneys and journalists assail these university judicial systems.
Evolved from the days when headmasters dispensed discipline, university judicial systems now gather panels of students or administrators to consider everything from petty theft to sexual assault.
"They're outgrowths of the honor committees" that handle allegations of cheating and plagiarism, says Richmond attorney Eileen Wagner, who represents Brzonkala. "That's all they are."
She says universities turned to these systems as times changed and more serious crimes started happening on campuses, instead of developing a new system or letting local prosecutors handle the cases.
One of those prosecutors, Montgomery County Commonwealth's Attorney Phil Keith, isn't sure what he thinks of Tech's campus court system, which operates in his jurisdiction.
"I'm not familiar enough with the system to have an opinion," Keith says. He prefers that students report on-campus crimes to the Tech police for investigation. Keith then meets with the victim of a crime and the police before deciding whether to prosecute the case.
In sexual assault cases, a woman "has to decide whether she's going to put herself on the line," he says. In Brzonkala's case, it would have been hard for him to prosecute either football player because she waited so long and had no physical evidence, he says.
Sexual assault victims' hesitation to go through traditional legal channels is one reason Virginia has led other states in its efforts to ensure that campus judicial courts are promoted as places where they can voice their complaints in confidence.
But people shouldn't expect campus systems to measure up to criminal justice standards.
"I do think that people's expectations of university judicial systems are perhaps unrealistically high," says Steve Janosik, who ran Tech's judicial system before being named Virginia's deputy secretary of education.
"It's easy for any court, whether it be a criminal court, a civil court, or a university judicial process, to make a decision where there is clear and convincing evidence.
"Unfortunately, in a lot of sexual assault cases, because of the trauma that might be involved, or alcohol, or the time lapse [before it's reported] evidence.
"It wouldn't matter what system you developed."
Betty Jones, a sexual assault educator at Radford University, also favors campus court proceedings in sexual assault cases because, she says, they "can be over with in a very short period of time," which means victims can get on with their lives sooner.
Their campus cases "don't drag on the way the criminal justice system does," she says.
Bill Kibler, an administrator at Texas A&M University and former president of the 1,200-member Association of Student Judicial Systems, agrees with Jones.
Some cases that don't make it to trial in a criminal court can be considered by a university judicial system because a different burden of proof is required, he says. The criminal system calls for a case to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, while campus court decisions, like civil cases, are based on a preponderance of the evidence.
That's reasonable, Kibler says, because criminal courts can lock people up, while the most universities can do is expel them from school.
But universities' acceptance of cases that won't pass criminal muster bothers some university observers.
"Because [the offenses are] on campus, they get this different type of treatment," says Mac McKerral, an assistant professor of journalism at Alabama's Troy State University. "It just doesn't make sense."
McKerral is chairman of the Campus Courts Task Force, which educates legislators and the public about the value of open university judicial systems.
To make his point, he cites a 1994 case at the University of South Florida in which a female student accused five male students of attacking her in a dormitory. The university immediately suspended the men.
At a campus judicial hearing a week after the suspensions, four of the men were reinstated and one was expelled, McKerral says. Meanwhile, the local prosecutor was still contemplating charges against the men.
That's an example of how campus court systems can get out of hand, he says. The public has no idea what happened in the university hearings and why four of the men were allowed to re-enroll while one was forced to leave the school.
"Educators shouldn't be in the business of trying people for these types of crimes," McKerral says. If they insist on handling these cases, he says, the process should be open to ensure fairness. "We know that everybody doesn't get a fair shake."
He says some universities use these systems to their advantage.
"The university's image - and in some cases a student's standing," especially a varsity athlete's, can be protected through these systems, McKerral says.
Federal court rulings defend the right of colleges and universities to set up their own in-house courts as a way to uphold the type of educational environment set by the schools.
Supporters of the systems say they help protect the victims while giving offenders a chance to learn from their mistakes.
Tech spokesman Larry Hincker says the university's court system is "just an opportunity for the university to police the actions of its students." He says he stands behind the university's handling of the Brzonkala case, though he is not free to discuss the details.
Wagner, Brzonkala's attorney, who has dealt with campus court systems all over the state, says they are ill-equipped to deal with felony-level cases and should get out of the business altogether.
Radford's Jones disagrees. She says campus court systems shouldn't be compared to the criminal system at all because students are charged in campus systems with violating standards in a code of conduct, not breaking a law.
In cases where students' actions also constitute crimes, Jones says they also should be charged with those crimes in the local court system.
Universities can't pick and choose the cases they take on, she says.
"Where do you draw the line?''
Staff writer Allison Blake contributed to this story.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
The court will hear Virginia Tech's motion to dismiss Christy Brzonkala's suit.
Tony Morrison and James Crawford still have not been served with the lawsuit. When they are, they will have 20 days to file a response.
Brzonkala's attorney says she also plans to file a civil suit for assault and battery against Morrison and Crawford, in case the federal suit is dismissed on a technicality.
LENGTH: Long : 168 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. 1. Christy Brzonkala, at herby CNBparents' home in Fairfax, seeks $8.3 million from Virginia Tech and
two players. 2. Eileen Wagner, Brzonkala's attorney, says colleges
shouldn't be handling felonies. color.