When a SIUE Student Alleged Rape, the Chancellor Overruled a Campus Panel

On October 17, 2017, Bailey Reed, a senior sociology major at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, went to the emergency room to report that she had just been raped by a classmate. Campus police arrived to take her statement, and the nurse examiner found a bruise on her cervix, which often indicates sexual assault.

Reed's case avoided all the complicating factors that people tend to use against women who accuse someone of sexual assault. She hadn't been drinking. She said she had told her assailant "no" at least seven times. She told a friend she'd been assaulted almost immediately after she got the classmate out of her apartment — and then made a report to law enforcement within hours. And while text messages showed that Reed's classmate tried to text her the next day, she never texted back. Instead, she reported the incident to both campus police and the college's Title IX Office.

Still, seven months later, Reed continues to fight SIUE. The school has not taken action against her assailant — in fact, the university's chancellor overruled a finding against him by the school's Sexual Harassment Panel, without explanation. It's only because Reed took out an order of protection against him, one that barred him from campus while she was on it, that his education was interrupted. The only criminal charge he has been hit with is a misdemeanor for violating the order of protection.

Her lawyer, Nicole Gorovsky, says the young man was not allowed to be in any classes he had with Reed after she obtained the protective order. Yet he nevertheless showed up in class one day — and sat down right in Reed's chair. Someone called the police, and he was arrested.

Read more: https://www.riverfronttimes.com/newsblog/2018/05/18/when-a-siue-student-alleged-rape-the-chancellor-overruled-a-campus-panel