It’s not OK for this Missouri university to let a known sex offender back on campus
Sklyer Boschen lives in a confusing place — the University of Missouri-Kansas City — that is a microcosm of the world around it. In this place, you can go to school to learn, make friends and also have the very real threat of rape loom over you in every classroom and promenade. In this place, your rapist can be identified, and suspended, only to be reenrolled months later to resume an education.
For Boschen it’s a terrifying place. She’s on a mission to change it, to ensure that UMKC protects students against sexual assault. And she wants policy changed to keep sex offenders from enrolling there.
Hers seems a reasonable request from a student wanting to feel safe on campus.
Boschen says she was raped after a dorm room get-together more than a year ago. She says she was “blackout drunk” at the time. She reported it to the university Title IX office, which is responsible for investigating such campus complaints. A year later, she also reported it to UMKC police. She waited because, after telling the university, “I got an extreme amount of backlash from people who were friends with the person who raped me,” Boschen said. She feared that telling police would make campus life more miserable.
Boschen said Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker’s office told her there wasn’t enough evidence to prosecute.
The Title IX office investigated and, using a “preponderance of evidence” standard, concluded that “it was more likely than not” that Boschen had been raped and that the student she accused should have known she was incapacitated at the time. Ergo, that he raped her.
He was suspended 18 months until Dec. 15, 2021. So, yes, he can reenroll — on probation — as long as he reports first to the Title IX office, has no contact with Boschen and gets training on consent. UMKC, like most universities, mandates training on consent and sexual assault for every new student. So, we can assume, he had trained already. And, according to the Title IX report, he told a witness that he knew Boschen had not given consent.
He should have been expelled. But that might not happen even if he were criminally charged.
Boschen started an online petition calling for her assailant to be banned from campus and for the university to change its policy on reenrolling students who have committed sexual assault. It has more than 1,000 signatures. Students and parents say they’re appalled.
University officials told me there is no one-size-fits-all when doling out punishment for students accused of sexual assault. “Even in criminal cases, there is a range of punishment,” said Christian Basi, spokesman for the University of Missouri System. The university has expelled other students for similar offenses. But Basi said, there can be nuance in every case. And sometimes it’s a hard call.
I’m sorry, but once the university knows a student sexually assaulted someone, no nuance merits placing the assailant back in the same space as the injured party.
It doesn’t matter that, as UMKC spokesman John Martellaro said, it’s rare that students suspended under such circumstances would ask to be reinstated, and it wouldn’t be granted just because they ask.
Boschen was told she would be informed if the man who raped her did return to campus.
If he’s allowed back, Boschen is leaving.
In January, she led a campus demonstration against sexual assault. She has organized another one for 7 p.m. Tuesday.
Students elsewhere also don’t feel safe. Last month hundreds at the University of Kansas protested calling for an end to “rape culture” after it circulated on social media that an unnamed woman had been drugged and raped. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln shut down a fraternity house after student protests over an alleged sexual assault. Similar demonstrations occurred in Iowa, Massachusetts, New York and Alabama.
Is now the #MeToo moment for colleges? Students are louder than ever before with their demands to stop sexual violence. A person who signed Boschen’s petition said: “Women will never be safe at college until we dismantle rape culture. It starts with consequences.”
