Patrick Witt, a student at Harvard Law School, has published an op-ed detailing his chilling experience with being accused of sexual assault as an undergraduate at Yale University. Regular readers of the New American Civil Rights Project are likely familiar with the due process concerns that have been raised regarding the Department of Education’s sexual assault guidance. Witt’s story is a powerful reminder of the harm that befalls innocent individuals who get caught up in such kangaroo court proceedings.

Witt writes,  “I am a first-year student at Harvard Law School, and I join the 28 members of our faculty who recently protested the university’s adoption of a new and expansive sexual harassment policy. While I agree wholeheartedly that universities have a moral as well as a legal obligation to provide their students with learning environments free of sexual harassment, I echo the faculty’s concern that this particular policy “will do more harm than good,” and I urge the university to reconsider its approach to addressing the problem.

If considered only in the abstract, many might wonder how a policy with such a laudable aim could draw any serious objections. And I might well have been among them — were it not for the fact that such a policy nearly ruined my life.

Now, in the hopes that my painful and humiliating experience might yet produce some good by improving the final measures adopted, I offer my own story as a real-life example of how this well-intended policy can produce disastrous consequences if it remains detached from the most basic elements of fairness and due process that form the foundation of our legal system.

Harvard’s new policies are substantially similar to those already in effect at Yale, my alma mater. While an undergraduate there, my ex-girlfriend filed an informal complaint against me with the then-newly-created University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct. The committee summoned me to appear and styled the meeting as a form of mediation. Its chairman, a professor with no prior experience handling dispute resolution, told me that I could have a faculty adviser present but no lawyer, and instructed me to avoid my accuser, who, by that point, I had neither seen nor spoken to in weeks. The committee imposed an ‘expectation of confidentiality’ on me so as to prevent any form of ‘retaliation’ against my accuser.

I would say more about what the accusation itself entailed if indeed I had such information. Under the informal complaint process, specific accusations are not disclosed to the accused, no fact-finding takes place, and no record is taken of the alleged misconduct. For the committee to issue an informal complaint, an accuser need only bring an accusation that, if substantiated, would constitute a violation of university policy concerning sexual misconduct. The informal “process” begins and ends at the point of accusation; the truth of the claim is immaterial.

When I demanded that fact-finding be done so that I could clear my name, I was told, ‘There’s nothing to clear your name of.’ When I then requested that a formal complaint be lodged against me — a process that does involve investigation into the facts — I was told that such a course of action was impossible for me to initiate. At any time, however, my accuser retained the right to raise the complaint to a formal level. No matter, the Committee reassured me, the informal complaint did not constitute a disciplinary proceeding and nothing would be attached to my official record at Yale.”

Despite the lack of evidence – or indeed effort to uncover any evidence – against Witt, he relates that he had a full-time job offer rescinded from his summer employer and that the Rhodes Trust suspended him from consideration for one of its prestigious scholarships. Although previously told that he was a likely NFL draft pick, no teams would touch him after the sexual assault accusation was made public. “I cannot begin to describe how exasperatingly difficult it has been to try to explain to people what an informal complaint is and how there was never any evidence — nor any effort made to discover evidence — to substantiate the claim made by my accuser,” Witt wrote. “My summer employer and the NFL certainly couldn’t understand it, and the media flat out didn’t care — the words ‘informal complaint’ were all that was needed to establish my guilt in their eyes.”

You can read the rest here.

At the liberal-leaning online magazine Slate, columnist and recent Yale graduate Katy Waldman indicates that while Witt may be no angel in spite of his outstanding athletic and academic accomplishments, his central argument is still basically sound: “He is right that “by giving to unsubstantiated accusations the confoundingly difficult-to-define title of ‘informal complaint,’ ” Yale plunged him under a cloud of suspicion he couldn’t dispel. He is right that “denying accused students an opportunity to clear their names” is unjust, “detached from the most basic elements of fairness and due process.” Everything Witt says about the power of these sub rosa systems to humiliate and handicap possibly innocent young men is correct.”