We Coloradans love transparency in our public institutions. Take our sunshine laws — two members of any Colorado government body can’t have coffee together to discuss the affairs of state without breaking the law. We wanna watch if they’re gonna to talk about us. Boulderites’ demand for a clear view into public decision making was obvious during the recent fuss over the 50-year contract to manage U.S. 36. Even though the negotiation was conducted within the law, we wanted to see it and have someone explain to us why it was such a good idea. Good for us. We expect our public institutions to be accountable to those of us they are supposed to be serving.

That is, of course, unless it involves charges of sexual harassment or discrimination at public universities. Then, public officials can make decisions that ruin peoples’ lives with little or no accountability. Somehow, this part of American society, including our very own University of Colorado, has decided that, in this case, slanted justice behind closed doors is okay.

Perhaps the most sensational case was in 2006 at Duke University where lacrosse players accused of sexual misconduct were suspended, publicly vilified, and the team’s coach fired. Less than a year later, the North Carolina Attorney General referred to these students as victims of “a tragic rush to accuse.” The recent fiasco between Patty Adler and CU’s Office of Discrimination and Harassment showed another bizarre side of what can happen when transparency, rules of evidence, and due process are seen as irrelevant anachronisms needed more by the huddled masses than the ivory towers. I’m still not sure what to think about the ogling philosophers at CU, but the fact-free report accusing them of sexual misconduct seems to be more of the same.

How and why have universities decided to treat harassment and discrimination charges so differently from what we all expect of American judicial institutions? One problem seems to be the desire of colleges to shield people who make accusations of sexual misbehavior. In most cases, this means shielding a woman accusing a man of sexual harassment from having to face her accuser, though Adler demonstrated that this is not a one-way street.

For example, the Guidelines for CU’s Office of Discrimination and Harassment states the following:

“In CU-Boulder’s process, the complainant and respondent will not be permitted to directly question each other and are not required to be present together at any point.”

It’s hard to see any justice system as fair when the accused cannot ask questions of the accuser — a simple concept enshrined in the Magna Carta that has since been a bedrock of our sense of justice. However, many universities, including ours, somehow see it differently.

Another redefinition of justice that universities, including CU, employ is reducing the standard of guilt from “beyond a reasonable doubt” to the far less rigorous “preponderance of the evidence,” where the standard is “more likely to have occurred than not.” So, for example, in a “he said-she said” debate over consent to sex, a man accused of forcing sex on a woman must prove the sex was more than likely consensual without him being able to ask her questions in front of a judge. Good luck.

And, as we learned from the Patty Adler experience, after the judgments are rendered, the CU Office of Discrimination and Harassment can’t tell us much of anything about what evidence led to their determination of guilt or innocence. It’s a secret.

Based on the embarrassments over the past few months, CU is now reviewing the policies and procedures of the Office of Discrimination and Harassment. The first step to redemption is one simple thing – shining the light on the processes and products of CU’s Office of Discrimination and Harassment. Make CU’s legal system as transparent as the rest of Colorado’s legal systems and let there be equal justice for all, even in the ivory towers.

Email ron@bikeandsail.net.