An analysis of annual reports from 48 colleges in 21 states reveals that 52.7% of campus sexual assault adjudications resulted in a finding of “not responsible” for the accused student – see table.
These online reports identify the outcomes for allegations of sexual assault hearings. The link to each report is embedded in the name of the College or University, first column in the Table, below. The information comes from both private and public institutions nationwide.
The analysis includes only reports that specifically identify the outcomes for adjudications involving allegations of sexual assault. The information does not include other potential conduct code violations, such as sexual harassment and sexual exploitation.
This finding is similar to a 2017 NCHERM report titled “Due Process and the Sex Police” that stated, “annual summaries show that they are finding no violation of policy 60% of the time in their total case decisions.”
Most institutions review sexual misconduct cases based on the preponderance of evidence standard. In practice, this standard is essentially a measure of credibility of the statements of the accuser and the accused. The fact that a larger percentage of students was found not responsible demonstrates that most allegations investigated by colleges are determined to be unfounded.
Table: Outcomes of Campus Adjudications of Sexual Assault Claims at 48 Colleges
i Decisions are mostly based on formal procedures. Exceptions for a few schools (noted below) include allegations that were screened out as not rising to the level of a policy violation. Few schools report those data, yet it is likely that many schools screen out allegations that do not rise to policy violations, suggesting that the percent not responsible would be larger than calculated here if schools reported the total number of allegations screened out. The number of decisions is usually the number of allegations, unless the report provides the number of respondents. Multiple allegations per respondent were more frequent than multiple respondents per allegation; hence the total number of decisions is somewhat greater than the number of respondents.
ii Enrollment data are from the US Dept. of Education, 2018.
iii The data represent one year from each school, usually the latest academic or calendar year for which a report is available (except MIT with 4 years).
iv If the large number of not responsible findings for this small school are considered an outlier, deleting the school’s data changes the total not responsible to 50%.
v Six “otherwise disciplined” students tallied as responsible in this table.
vi Unwelcome sexual touching and Exposure are not included in OSU’s definition of sexual assault.
vii Sexual battery is included here as sexual assault for SJSU.
viii Some of Stanford’s outcomes are ambiguous: 1 of 2 non-hearing resolutions were counted as responsible, the other is not clear and was not counted; 5 student decisions had an unspecified split between “no charge” and formal findings of not responsible. All 5 were counted as not responsible.
ix Count of 9 outcomes listed as “Available evidence did not support a charge of policy violation or necessitate further university investigation” were tallied here as not responsible.
x Sexual assault definition doesn’t include sexual abuse (non-consensual sexual contact).
xi Outcomes for employees not included here.
xii Not responsible total includes 1 screened out allegation.
* These 7 schools may have included a small number of allegations involving employees, teasing this out was not possible with the reported information.