What s wrong with Harvard s method of gathering evidence?
As both the advocate and the judge of the victim s claim, Harvard’s Ad Board is in the position of having to gather the evidence it will then evaluate in order to decide these cases. What counts as evidence in cases of sexual assault is by no means obvious. The lawyers who represent sexual assault victims in criminal court often spend 100 hours per case talking to people, getting specially trained Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners (SANE) to testify about physical evidence, and gathering firsthand testimony. By contrast, Harvard’s new policy requires that everything to be counted as “evidence” be gathered by the Secretary to the Ad Board within a few days. The Secretary, however, as an Assistant Dean has many other duties and responsibilities that go along with his or her job, and thus may not have very much time to devote to this process. Furthermore, the Secretary has no training on sexual violence that would aid him or her in understanding what qualifies as evidence or how to procure it
