Equality, Process, and Campus Sexual Assault
Julie Novkov
By the end of the College Bowl Series playoff game, Heisman-winning quarterback Jameis Winston was having a very bad day. His Florida State Seminoles had been trounced by the Oregon Ducks in a game featuring multiple miscues and turnovers by the offense and by Winston himself. At the end of the game, as Winston was leaving the field, a handful of jubilant Duck players initiated a taunt to the tune of the Seminoles’ “tomahawk chop” chant: “No means no!”
The chant, which provoked delighted support, predictable outrage, charges of hypocrisy, and threats of punishment from the head coach, referred to a simmering allegation against Winston dating back to December 2012 that he had raped a fellow student. On the night of December 6, Winston’s accuser, a nineteen-year-old female freshman, allegedly shared at least five mixed drinks with him at a bar and departed in a taxi with three Florida State football players. She claimed that her memory then became hazy, but recalls returning to consciousness in an apartment where she was subjected to sexual assault after indicating her lack of consent. Her assailant then dressed her and returned her on his scooter to an intersection near her dormitory. She posted an online plea for help, and two friends intervened. One finally convinced her to contact the police and placed a 911 call on her behalf at 3:22 AM on the night of the alleged assault. Because she called from her dorm room, the call was routed to the campus police, and a campus police officer drove her to the hospital. At the hospital, she indicated her belief that the assault had taken place off campus, so the Tallahassee City police interviewed her both at the hospital that night and the following morning when she returned to complete her statement.
In this Paper, I suggest thinking about assault accusations as community wrongs rather than individual wrongs, and I propose developing an approach that focuses on structures rather than on individual-level analysis of consent and intent. Cultural struggles over sexual assault and consent seem primed to continue. So, then, will the controversy over the proper handling of sexual assault cases, including concern over the proper framing and assignment of responsibility and the appropriate exercise of due process. The shift to community and structural analysis, however, would be better suited than the current framework to navigate through the conflicts and discontinuities produced by the layering of frameworks of women’s equality, the rights of the accused, and university accountability, as well as to protect the rights and interests of individual students. This new analysis also facilitates looking at structures and practices that make assault both more likely to occur and less subject to mitigation through ascribing individual accountability to offenders.