Yale has brought controversial charges against two star athletes in recent years, both on the eve of their biggest games: quarterback Patrick Witt in 2014 just before the Yale-Harvard game (and when he was up for a Rhodes scholarship) and Jack Montague, captain of the Ivy-League championship basketball tram just before this year’s rare appearance in March Madness. As promised, Montague has just filed suit against Yale.
His accuser said she had consensual sex with Montague three times before the alleged sexual misconduct and one time after. On the fourth occasion, his lawyer said, she joined him in bed, voluntarily removed all of her clothes, and they had sexual intercourse. Then they got up, left the room and went separate ways. Later that same night, she reached out to him to meet up, then returned to his room voluntarily, and spent the rest of the night in his bed with him. You can read the full complaint here. I summarized the document here.
Four major points from the complaint:
1.) Why Did Yale Break Its Own Rules? Montague’s accuser did not file charges against him. Instead, a Yale Title IX administrator did so. Yale’s policies grant the Title IX bureaucrat this authority, but only in “extremely rare cases,” and only when “there is serious risk to the safety of individuals or the community.” In February 2016, Stephanie Spangler, who oversees Yale’s Title IX coordinators, told the Yale Daily News, “Except in rare cases involving an acute threat to community safety, coordinators defer to complainants’ wishes.”
Montague’s case was a claim filed by a former sex partner around a year after the two had slept together. Even his accuser didn’t claim that he was an “acute threat” (or any threat) to her at all. But if there was no “acute threat to community safety” from Montague, why did Yale pursue the case?
2.) What Would Discovery Produce? Montague has sued Yale—along with two Title IX administrators. The complaint certainly raises some troubling questions about one of those administrators, Angela Gleason. (As so often occurs in these cases, the administrators making key decisions seem to have a strong background in identity politics.) Gleason appears to have aggressively pressured the accuser to file a complaint against Montague—after the Yale bureaucrat learned from the accuser’s roommate about the basketball player allegedly having a “bad experience” with the accuser. According to the complaint, Gleason misled the accuser both about Yale’s policies and Montague’s disciplinary history.
The complaint plausibly suggests that Gleason wanted the accuser to file charges because Montague was such an inviting target—expelling a high-profile star athlete would prove Yale’s “seriousness” about confronting sexual assault. With whom did Gleason and other Title IX bureaucrats consult before deciding to go ahead against Montague?
3.) Yale’s Likely Response. In its public statements earlier in the case, Yale has telegraphed its response: citing material from the Spangler Reports (the twice-yearly documents summarizing all sexual assault cases on campus, which I’ve regularly analyzed), the university has argued that it doesn’t expel everyone accused of sexual assault. Therefore, its policies should be presumed discerning and fair.
The complaint uses these same reports, and other Yale sexual assault documents, to argue that—even assuming Montague was guilty, which looks like a big assumption based on the information, his punishment far exceeded comparably-situated Yale students. That disparity reinforces the theory that the university targeted Montague to send a message.
Another point: in its statement responding to the lawsuit, Yale touted its specially “trained” disciplinary panelists. But the university has, thus far, refused to reveal precisely what “training material” these panelists received. Since Yale considers this material so critical, will it make the “training” public?
4.) Yale and the Treatment of Athletes. From Baylor to Tennessee to Florida State, star athletes sometimes get special treatment in sexual assault cases. But when universities don’t make money from the athletics program, there’s scant evidence of favored treatment for athletes. Yale’s troubling attitudes toward due process when athletes are accused first came to light in the Patrick Witt case. It seems to have continued with its handling of Montague—where the complaint argues that the accuser was treated far more favorably than Montague.
One aspect of the Montague affair that has received insufficient attention is the treatment of the men’s basketball team. The basketball team—in a gesture of empathy for a friend going through a difficult time—wore warmup shirts with Montague’s nickname. In response, the players received vitriolic criticism (this Unite Against Sexual Assault Yale statement is representative), and, it seems, pressure from the Yale administration to issue an apology.
If the university were so sensitive to portraying Montague as guilty that it pressured other students to refrain from pro-Montague statements, how fairly could it have treated him?
We’ve seen several of these suits settled, but the awards aren’t disclosed. I would think that the damage to a Yale basketball star and potential Rhodes scholar might run to the tens of millions.
The negative response to the team’s show of support contrasts sharply with the lack of criticism directed at the Yale Women’s Center. IIUC they they indicated that a student had been expelled for sexual misconduct and all but named Montague.
With respect to the statement by Yale that most sanctions fall short of expulsion, there was a side-effect of their policy: some commenters concluded that what Mr. Montague had done must have been pretty awful. That might not have been Yale’s conscious strategy, but they should have known it would happen.