After a recent revelation that an Alcorn State football player is a registered sex offender, the National Collegiate Athletic Association is facing pressure to establish a rule that no convicted felons can participate in their sports.
Before transferring to Alcorn State to play football, Jamil Cooks was found guilty of “abusive sexual contact” by a court martial at the United States Air Force Academy. He was expelled from the academy and required to register as a sex offender.
Because this particular case involves an athlete, it may be tempting to turn to the NCAA to address the issue, because they have the power to motivate the behavior of member schools. But to focus on what the NCAA can do ignores the larger context of the problem.
Presumably, students who are expelled for sexual misconduct can just go on to attend other universities — no matter if they are athletes who get recruited to play for teams, or if they just apply and are accepted based on academic credentials. Athletes may be especially likely to be accepted to other schools, because they have skills which are particularly valuable to the universities which overshadow an expulsion for sexual misconduct. But it is possible that non-athletes who were expelled for the same reason could successfully transfer. And the NCAA would have no jurisdiction over these cases.
Colleges should take into account the fact that the majority of sexual assault perpetrators are repeat offenders. If a college accepts a student who was expelled for this reason, it could be putting its other students in danger.
In 2007, a former student filed a lawsuit against the University of Georgia because she was raped by a football player who had previously been expelled from a community college for sexually assaulting two women there. The suit ended with a six-figure settlement.
Universities are obligated to adjudicate cases of sexual misconduct, because it falls under Title IX as a form of sex-based discrimination in education. According to Know Your IX’s website, “If a school knows or reasonably should know about discrimination, harassment or violence that is creating a ‘hostile environment’ for any student, it must act to eliminate it, remedy the harm caused and prevent its recurrence.”
Part of preventing the recurrence of sexual violence should be not allowing perpetrators to come to the school in the first place. If universities continue to accept students who have previously been expelled for sexual misconduct, they put themselves at an increased risk for lawsuits. If a university does accept a student who has been previously expelled because of sexual misconduct, it would have to take extra precautions such as requiring the student be enrolled in a counseling program.
Legislation about which students colleges are allowed and not allowed to admit would be difficult or even impossible to establish, especially since expulsion for sexual misconduct is not the same as a conviction for sexual offense. The former case is a civil rights litigation and the latter is a criminal charge, and they require different standards of evidence to make a decision. The adjudications for sexual misconduct cases at colleges operate solely in the world of civil litigations. This is where the training and strengthening of local law enforcement, as we have previously discussed, can fill in the gaps in overall community safety.
In the whirlwind of political discussion surrounding the issue of sexual assault on college campuses, we do not often think about what happens to students after they are expelled for sexual misconduct. Colleges have been at the center of the debate over sexual assault, because women are more likely to be assaulted there. But to think of colleges as isolated bubbles is a fundamental mistake. Making a perpetrator leave a campus does not eliminate the risk of sexual assault; we must think about the issue in a broader context in order to address it effectively.
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