sheilarmccann

In a shiny case with its own lighting in the corner! https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6B_XNr1_liVOE5oVGh2UEFRTVpwc29UQndCOHkxYVZPNkw4/view?usp=sharing

That’s an issue we’re continuing to pursue. If there are students who assert they were punished despite circumstances that fall under the amnesty policy, we’d be interested in talking with them. A recent case at BYU-Idaho illustrated one limit of the amnesty policy when a bishop withdrew his endorsement for a student who had reported a sexual assault. That meant she was suspended from school, although it had considered her complaint founded.

I’ve thought about how the fast and large response to the online query Rachel described and to the work, as it continued, showed how these were stories our community really wanted to tell. It’s routine to write about sexual assault by interviewing advocates or covering the progress of a prosecution through the courts. In 2016, when were doing this work before #MeToo, it was far less common to report about institutional barriers that prevent people from coming forward and the impact on them when reports were poorly handled. People were ready to talk about these  issues, and social media / the power of the internet helped us find them in a new way.

From our coverage of the official adoption of the policy: Going forward, students who are victims or witnesses will not be referred to the private school's Honor Code Office, and will "not be disciplined by the university for any related honor code violation occurring at or near the time of the reported sexual misconduct unless a person's health or safety is at risk."

And here's something I thought I knew, especially as a former legal affairs reporter: that we were generally covering the range of issues surrounding sexual assault. I was surprised, after so many years of traditional coverage, how much more there was to explore and explain when we dropped a traditional narrow focus [covering a limited number of prosecutions, covering legislation, etc] and instead listened to people sharing their experiences.