{"id":48643,"date":"2013-07-08T16:29:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-08T15:29:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/student-charged-with-honor-code-violation-for-speaking-about-her-rape\/48643\/"},"modified":"2013-07-08T16:48:18","modified_gmt":"2013-07-08T15:48:18","slug":"student-charged-with-honor-code-violation-for-speaking-about-her-rape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/student-charged-with-honor-code-violation-for-speaking-about-her-rape\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Charged With Honor Code Violation for Speaking About Her Rape"},"content":{"rendered":"

The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill is now facing a third federal investigation<\/a>\u00a0into its sexual assault policies. This time, the U.S. Department of Education\u2019s Office for Civil Rights is investigating allegations that UNC inappropriately retaliated against Landen Gambill, a sophomore at the university, after she publicly came forward about her rape.<\/p>\n

Gambill was one of several students who filed a federal complaint<\/a>\u00a0against the university at the beginning of the year, alleging UNC has created a \u201chostile environment\u201d for rape victims attempting to report sexual crimes. In February, the sophomore faced an honor code violation<\/a>\u00a0that claimed she \u201cintimidated\u201d her alleged rapist by publicly sharing the story of her sexual assault \u2013 even though she never named him, simply referring to him as an \u201cex-boyfriend.\u201d Later that year, even after the male student in question had been found guilty of sexually harassing Gambill, he was reassigned to a dorm building \u201c in close proximity<\/a>\u201d to hers.<\/p>\n

The new investigation will attempt to determine whether those two actions \u2013 subjecting Gambill to UNC\u2019s honor court and moving Gambill\u2019s assailant closer to her \u2013 constitute inappropriate retaliation. The honor code charge against Gambill, which could have resulted in her expulsion<\/a>, has since been dropped.<\/p>\n

At the end of April, after students on several different college campuses<\/a>\u00a0filed formal complaints against their administrations, federal officials reminded universities that they\u2019re not allowed to retaliate against students<\/a>\u00a0who speak up about sexual assault. \u201cIndividuals should be commended when they raise concerns about compliance with the federal civil rights laws, not punished for doing so,\u201d the U.S. Department of Education reiterated in a \u201c Dear Colleague<\/a>\u201d letter distributed to universities.<\/p>\n

UNC has repeatedly denied that it took any actions to target Gambill after she began speaking up about the university\u2019s sexual assault policy. University officials confirm<\/a>they will cooperate with the third federal investigation.<\/p>\n

Over the past year, UNC has faced significant backlash<\/a>\u00a0from its student body about its mistreatment of rape survivors. In May, the university formed a task force<\/a>\u00a0to review and reform the current sexual assault policy. Since Gambill and her fellow activists have gone on to support a network of student advocates<\/a>\u00a0working to combat rape culture on their own campuses, similar slow progress<\/a>\u00a0is being made at other universities as well.<\/p>\n

Republished with permission from: AlterNet<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill is now facing a third federal investigation\u00a0into its sexual assault policies. This time, the U.S. Department of Education\u2019s Office for Civil Rights is investigating allegations that UNC inappropriately retaliated against Landen Gambill, a sophomore at the university, after she publicly came forward about her rape. Gambill was one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-48643","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}