Academic Sexual Misconduct
Sexual misconduct entails any behaviour of a nature that is unsexual that is unwelcome that gets committed by coercion, force or without consent against another person. Sexual misconduct is an offence that is lesser to an offence like a felony sexual assault in the sense that the situation in sexual assault is usually sexual while in sexual misconduct, it is not sexual. Academic sexual misconduct is sexual misconduct that happens within an institution of learning that usually involves teachers and students. His paper presents a discussion of a case of academic misconduct that got reported by students in Roosevelt University’s Chicago College of Performing Arts in which students launched a claim of sexual misconduct against one of the members of the faculty. The paper further provides the suggestions for the methods about the effective handling of the incident by the Dean of Arts and Humanities in the school.
Effective handling of an academic sexual misconduct incident
Academic sexual misconduct is an allegation that is serious that the people trying to solve it need to take into consideration the rights of the victims, who are the students in this case and the accused, who is the faculty member. A team responsible for responding to such situations should get established to conduct a conclusive investigation into the matter to establish the actual truth so that the decision can be fair. In the case of the Chicago College of Performing Arts, the evidence from various witnesses proved sufficient to lead to the decision to terminate the faculty member from employment in the school (Academic Sexual Misconduct Database, n.d.). The various methods through which the Dean of Arts and Humanities can effectively handle this incident are as follows.
Investigation
The Dean will have to ensure that all the facts regarding the case get gathered in coordination with law enforcement to ensure that the evidence gathered against the faculty member is sufficient enough to warrant the appropriate judgment. The investigation by the police will be able to establish whether there are any possible criminal charges to be brought against the faculty member. All the facts in the investigation in the case of the CCPA would entail collecting the witness testimonies from the witness that are presenting their testimonies about the faculty member’s actions that were an indication of sexual misconduct.
Internal policies
The Dean can make use of internal policies or methods of resolution of such matters that have been put in place by the institution to handle the sexual misconduct incident. The rules that are set out in the policies of the university regarding how to handle incidents of sexual misconduct against students should be followed to the latter in handling this particular incident. These rules and procedures should be reviewed as they are supposed to be included in the handbooks for employees and students upon signing of the contract to be part of the institution. In this case, therefore, the Dean can review the documents to establish what the provisions say about proven sexual misconduct.
Managing communication and monitoring the victim
Another way through which the Dean can handle this incident is by keeping up with the monitoring the students that have been victims of the incident to be sure of their well-being. Communications will also need to be managed in that the Dean will have to establish what should get communicated to the student and the parents, the various school community members like student advisors, faculty staff and members, local government and community members, and other students. The Dean will also have to prepare a statement that will be presented to the media about the action that is being taken to address the incident.
Disciplinary action
The Dean will be under an obligation to ensure that such incident does not occur in the school again and as such, he will take disciplinary action against the faculty member (Wurtele et al., 2020). The disciplinary action will have to sufficiently fit the allegations that have been brought against the accused faculty member. The disciplinary action can be the termination of the employment, a warning or suspension. In the case of the CCPA, the faculty member that was faced with the allegations of sexual misconduct was terminated of his employment from the school. Later on, the Dean can hold a session for debriefing with a legal counsel and a team of leaders from the school to review how the incident was handled to establish whether the decision made was sufficient to avoid similar issues in future.
Appropriateness of the decision by CCPA
Upon proof of the allegations that include numerous testimonies against the faculty member for sexual misconduct, the school reached a decision to terminate the employment of the faculty member, Sean Kelley. This decision was appropriate to the extent that his actions will not affect the students in the college anymore. However, legal action should have been taken against him so that he will not be able to continue such actions in any other institution. The decision by the school to annually train the faculty members, following the allegations, on issues like harassment, discrimination and handling of complaints is appropriate (Wurtele et al., 2020). This is because the faculty members will be aware of the actions that amount to sexual misconduct and how to handle certain situations.
Considerations
There are several considerations that should have been put in place by the leadership of the school in handling this case. For instance, they did not consider that the allegation may have come about by the insightful actions of one student who may have had significant influence over the other students that came forward to destroy the credibility of the faculty member. They should have considered whether there was any concrete evidence that proves that the faculty member was guilty of the sexual misconduct allegations. They should have involved the police in the investigation to establish what actually happened before terminating the accused from employment. In this case, they should have considered taking legal action so that the faculty member does not get a chance to commit such a crime again.
References
Academic Sexual Misconduct Database. (n.d.). Incident 8349 – Resolved. Retrieved from https://academic-sexual-misconduct-database.org/in….
Wurtele, S. K., Mathews, B., & Kenny, M. C. (2019). Keeping students out of harm’s way: Reducing risks of educator sexual misconduct. Journal of child sexual abuse, 28(2), 160-186.