BU assault case will test limits of schools’ oversight

Under Leftist doctrine everybody is responsible for everybody else but not for themselves.  A woman who failed to take basic precautions for her own safety now blames the university

The entrance to Boston University’s Student Village 2 dormitory certainly looks safe: Two uniformed security guards sit at a desk flanked by monitors streaming video from surveillance cameras in the 26-story building. No one gets in without an ID or an authorized host.

But one night during Head of the Charles weekend in 2015, two unescorted MIT students entered 11 unlocked rooms without being detected. One of them, Samson Donick, came upon a sleeping student and sexually assaulted her until her screams drove him from the room; he ultimately pleaded guilty and received five years probation for the attack.

Now, “StuVi2,” as the gleaming tower is known on campus, has become a testing ground for the duty of colleges and universities to keep students safe. The victim, known publicly only as Jane Doe, is suing the university and top administrators, arguing that BU officials gave students a false sense of security in the dorm while failing to enforce security policies that could have prevented the attack.

BU contends that Jane Doe could have protected herself if she had simply locked her bedroom door as officials recommend. She “was given the tools to assure her safety, a door with a sturdy lock, but she elected not to use it,” BU lawyers wrote in a court filing that also included a section entitled “The University Made No Definite Or Certain Promise To Keep Students Safe.”

In response, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Rosemary Connolly has admonished university attorneys for seeming to blame the victim.

“Here, this student was just in bed sleeping. That’s all she did, and . . . the thread through BU’s brief is that it’s her own darn fault this happened,” Connolly said during a June hearing.

BU officials declined to comment for this story.

Long gone is the era of “in loco parentis,” when colleges acted much like parents, freely setting curfews and otherwise restricting student freedom in order to keep order on campus. Today, as BU’s attorneys wrote in a court filing, “College students are young adults who are given the freedom to make responsible decisions. As a matter of law, universities do not serve as surrogate parents.”

Nonetheless, as Connolly wrote in rejecting the university’s motion to dismiss the case in October, “BU owes a duty to the plaintiff beyond that of an ordinary landlord.”

A case involving the sexual assault of a student at Pine Manor College in Brookline has, for decades, set the minimum standard for the obligation of Massachusetts institutions of higher learning. In 1977, the attacker broke into a freshman woman’s room, took her away from her dorm through an unsecured gate, and assaulted her, undetected by the campus patrol guard who was responsible for checking the gates — all breaches that the state Supreme Judicial Court said could have been prevented only by the school.

“No student has the ability to design and implement a security system,” wrote Massachusetts Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Liacos for the majority in the 1983 opinion. The student was awarded a verdict of $175,000 from both Pine Manor itself and William P. Person, its vice president responsible for the security system, but the trial judge later reduced it to $20,000 on the school’s end due to a state law limiting judgments against charitable institutions.

But more recent cases have seemed to limit schools’ responsibilities.

In 2018, a state superior court judge dismissed a lawsuit against Northeastern University from a student who argued that the university’s failure to install automatically locking doors had allowed an intruder to enter her room and assault her while she was incapacitated by date rape drugs.

In a major decision earlier that year, Massachusetts’ top court upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit by the father of an MIT student who had committed suicide, finding that, although institutions could be held accountable for student suicides, the school should not be held responsible in that case.

The family of 25-year-old graduate student Han Nguyen argued that the school knew of Nguyen’s struggles with mental health but failed to provide adequate services for him. MIT, supported by BU and 17 other Massachusetts schools, argued that Nguyen had autonomy to make his own life decisions and that there was little advisers could do when he refused help.

The state’s highest court agreed.

“Universities are not responsible for monitoring and controlling all aspects of their students’ lives,” wrote Associate Justice Scott Kafker in the unanimous decision. “University students are young adults, not young children.”

In the StuVi2 case, BU’s lawyers drew on the Northeastern and MIT holdings in shaping their motion for dismissal, emphasizing the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s rejection of the old “in loco parentis” standard, and the Superior Court’s finding that non-automatic locks were adequate.

The “guiding principles apply with equal force here: even if the University has a duty to provide reasonably safe dormitories, it is unrealistic to require (or expect) a university to assume the role of insurer or custodian over its adult students,” BU’s lawyers wrote.

Jeffrey Beeler, who argued for the Nguyen family against MIT, said he sees a growing pattern among universities.

“They are very quick to brand the students who will be attending . . . as being adults legally, and therefore pretty much on their own relative to the risks they will face in a college environment,” Beeler said. “What colleges have been trying to do is convince courts to view them as a bystander to risks that are foreseeable in connection with their students.”

StuVi2 became an instant landmark when it opened in 2009: 26 stories of floor-to-ceiling windows towering over the Massachusetts Turnpike and an entrance with the elegance of a hotel lobby. Boston University called the dormitory, which houses about 960 students, “a jewel in the crown of BU’s campus.”

It also had a prominent 24-hour security presence, including not only guards, but scanners where students must swipe their IDs to reach the elevators. Visitors can enter only after both they and their host have provided identification.

Donick, an MIT sophomore, signed in as a guest of a female BU student in the early morning hours of Oct. 18, 2015, before leaving his host behind. Despite BU housing policy requiring guests to remain with their hosts at all times, Donick and at least one other man roamed the building alone deep into the night.

The two MIT students didn’t show up on surveillance cameras as they went from floor to floor upstairs, making their way through upper stairwells and hallways where there are no cameras or regular patrols, according to court depositions. They easily entered unlocked apartments on seven floors before coming to the front door of Jane Doe’s apartment on the 13th floor, which she shared with a suitemate.

Then, “at approximately 2:45 a.m.,” Donick “entered the suite and then individual bedroom of [Boston University junior] Jane Doe, who was sleeping, and sexually assaulted her,” according to court documents. Doe woke to the assault and screamed at Donick to leave, then rushed to wake her suitemate when he fled, according to the Suffolk district attorney at the time.

Donick eventually pleaded guilty to indecent assault and battery, assault and battery, and breaking and entering.

Other students who lived in StuVi2 said they would have been equally vulnerable to attack. One former student said she was fortunate that her roommate was awake when the two MIT students entered their apartment that night.

“I kept thinking, you know, what if my roommate hadn’t been awake?” said the student, who asked that her name not be published. “It’s definitely not uncommon for students to leave their doors unlocked when they’re physically home.”

Jane Doe argued that BU and individual administrators bear responsibility in the incident for failing to enforce the guest policy, selecting locks without an automatic function, and not pressing students to keep their bedroom doors locked.

Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore, one of the named defendants, acknowledged knowing that students sometimes kept their doors unlocked — and that the school’s guest policy was not consistently enforced. “We don’t want to create a place where we’re disciplining every student who does not walk a resident out of the building,” Elmore said in a deposition. “It starts to feel stifling and restrictive on the total environment that they’ve got to live in.”

Doe’s lawyers argue that BU didn’t crack down on unlocked doors even after the 2015 attack, noting that in 2016 another unescorted guest entered multiple female students’ StuVi2 suites and asked them sexually explicit questions.

“It is stunning that BU takes the position that its security measures in October 2015 were ‘reasonable,’ and that this event was unforeseeable, given that an almost identical event happened just over a year after the assault of Jane Doe,” her lawyers wrote.

Elmore acknowledged in his deposition that an e-mail warning students to lock doors and follow guest policy was sent out to students only after the second incident, in 2016.

Lisa Parlagreco, who is cocounsel on a brief for another sexual assault case against Northeastern University, said the challenge for Jane Doe’s attorneys will be proving that BU’s security failings were more like the Pine Manor case and less like those in the Northeastern and MIT cases. If Jane Doe does prevail, Parlagreco said, it will send a message “to any other college or university in the Commonwealth that might be following BU’s model . . . that they continue that practice at their peril.”

The case of Jane Doe v. Boston University is scheduled to go to trial sometime in 2020. Currently named defendants include Elmore; David Zamjoski, BU’s director of residence life; and Thomas Robbins, former chief of the BU police. Doe argues that all of them should be held accountable, saying, “BU promised and represented to me and my family that the dormitory would be safe, that BU was committed to preventing sexual assault, and that the safety and security of students was their number one priority.”

“My family and I relied on these representations,” she said.

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Dreamy old-fashioned conservatism at Princeton

PRINCETON, N.J.—Here on Prospect Avenue, among a row of august mega-mansions masquerading as academic buildings, the next generation of America’s conservative elites is being groomed. Far away in Washington, D.C.—well, not so far away on the Acela—American politics seem to keep getting more and more chaotic, with Donald Trump’s impeachment, nonstop Twitter drama, and White House staffers staging their own spin-off of Survivor. At Princeton, however, conservative-leaning students and professors are mostly insulated from the day-to-day tumult. They’re more interested in a bigger question: What should conservatism—and America—look like moving forward?

It’s a weird time to be young and conservative, especially at a school like Princeton. Elite conservative circles at these universities tend to focus on great books and big ideas, on statesmanship and lofty principles. Nothing could be further from the culture of American politics at the national level today, driven as it is by tribalism and thirst for the blood of political enemies. The students I spoke with mostly cast a side-eye at the meme-driven, own-the-libs mentality promoted by organizations such as Turning Point USA that are popular on many college campuses.

Instead, students at Princeton who lean to the right have helped build a robust suite of conservative groups, most prominently the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, an expansive academic center overseen by the prominent scholar Robert P. George. At a distinctly anti-elite moment in American politics, the leaders of this microcosm are doubling down on one of the oldest theories of politics: that ideas have the power to shape the direction of the country.

It remains an open question, however, whether conservative intellectuals and their ideas still matter in determining what happens to the Republican Party and the conservative movement after Trump. If the past few years have proved anything politically, it’s that conservative elites aren’t great at predicting what the American people actually want. At least at Princeton, students and their mentors are betting that romantic ideals such as collegiality and intellectual rigor have not totally lost their relevance in the Trump era.

Of America’s elite universities, Princeton has a plausible claim to being one of the most powerful incubators of young conservatives who want to work in politics. The campus is largely apolitical or vaguely liberal, students told me, but George has carved out a mini-kingdom for right-leaning academics and students, who have gone on to hold all sorts of influential positions. Many leading conservative luminaries, including Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and Senator Ted Cruz, have degrees from the institution. Like graduates of other prestigious colleges, Princeton alumni serve as Hill staffers, diplomats, think-tank wonks, and even Fox News personalities.

While Princeton’s conservative life may be flourishing, its intellectual environment is distinctly at odds with conservatism on the national stage. On a recent chilly morning, a collection of like-minded professors, postgraduate fellows in the Madison Program, and university staffers gathered for a weekly coffee chat in one of those Prospect Avenue faux mega-mansions, sipping coffee in armchairs near a cozy fire. One professor held a mug bearing the slogan “The dogma lives loudly in you,” a reference to Senator Dianne Feinstein’s now-infamous comment to the conservative judicial scholar Amy Coney Barrett ahead of her 2017 confirmation to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

No one seemed particularly dispirited by the mind-bending task of teaching students about conservative thought in the age of Trump. “We shall overcome,” said George, the group’s informal leader, with a chuckle. George, a native West Virginian, is an amateur bluegrass musician, and these freewheeling discussions occasionally turn into impromptu folk-music jams, complete with hippie-era protest songs. He still believes that America is a creedal nation, accessible to anyone who believes in its principles and wants to participate in civic life in good faith.“There will come a time after Trump,” he said. When that happens, “conservatism, and the country, are going to have to figure out: What do we do then?”

The students and professors who move in Princeton’s conservative worlds have a diverse range of political views: They are pro-Trump and anti-Trump, stalwart supporters of the Republican Party and politically homeless wanderers with conservative leanings. I talked with students who like some of what Trump is doing, but for the most part, they were hesitant to go full MAGA. Regardless of their political persuasions, they seem to share a vision of how politics should be done, prizing respectful debate, principled arguments, and guidance from thinkers such as John Locke and Alexis de Tocqueville. It’s an ethos focused, above all, on civility and erudition.

Akhil Rajasekar, a junior who founded an undergraduate chapter of the Federalist Society and serves as the editor in chief of the conservative journal The Princeton Tory, told me that issues such as impeachment have gone all but unmentioned among his friends and peers. “We are just debating the way we see the world and how it should be,” Rajasekar said. Conversations about politics at restaurants and bars are always cordial and respectful, he added. “We place a high premium on that kind of collegiality.”

Even something so basic as collegiality can seem quaint these days. Although American politics have always been ugly and divisive, elite manners and sensibilities at least superficially governed how political life was conducted. The art of persuasion was at the very least afforded lip service. Not so much anymore.

I asked George whether he and his colleagues are training horse-and-buggy drivers in a world built for cars, giving his students the arguably false impression that the political world can be won with nothing more than persuasive arguments and compelling ideas. “We have a motto for students in the Madison Program—it’s on some of the swag we hand out,” he said. “It’s ‘Think deeply, think critically, and think for yourself.’” George, a long-respected figure in the conservative political world, has been a vocal critic of Trump since before the 2016 election. As a result, unlike in prior Republican administrations, he has largely remained on the sidelines of policy initiatives and debates happening in Trump’s Washington. Still, he’s committed to his vision of what the conservative movement, and American politics, can look like. “I have a kind of faith in the power of clear, coherent, deep thinking to produce good citizens and good people,” he said.

Students immersed in the conservative world at Princeton don’t always share George’s starry-eyed optimism, however. In the face of a national political culture that can be profoundly cynical, some have become jaded. “Idealism is dead at Princeton,” Christian Schmidt, a senior who has been involved in nearly every conservative organization on campus, told me over apple cider at a local coffee shop. “The primary emotion, I think, on Princeton’s campus is apathy. Or apathy fused with resignation.”

Other students said they don’t see a clear place for themselves in conservative politics, no matter how engaged they might be in the world of conservative ideas. “I’ve always been kind of wary to identify as conservative,” Will Nolan, a 2019 graduate and the former president of the Anscombe Society, a student group focused on promoting traditional notions of marriage and sexuality, told me. He believes that climate change is real, for example, and has been dismayed by the resistance to the issue he has encountered among some people in conservative circles. Being a “flag-holding Republican has never been the highest priority for me,” he said.

Another student, Lucy Dever, who has been active in Princeton Pro-Life, said she doesn’t really think of herself as a political person. But when she attended the annual March for Life in D.C. last year, there was “a lot of cheering for President Trump,” she told me. This made her uncomfortable: “I think the pro-life cause is not a party-politics cause, or shouldn’t be,” she said. “It’s a moral issue, and not a political one.”

Most of the people I spoke with described feeling welcome to share their ideas on Princeton’s campus—a number of students and faculty specifically mentioned that the school’s president, Christopher Eisgruber, has made a point of creating space for diverse viewpoints. In elite circles beyond Princeton’s tony campus, however, they do not think this is necessarily the case. “It can be very lonely if you feel like you’re the only one who believes these things,” said Serena Sigillito, who works at the Witherspoon Institute, a conservative think tank near Princeton’s campus that also falls under George’s umbrella of influence.* Especially for conservatives who make their life in elite worlds, there can be a “temptation to withdraw into [our] own little communities and bubbles.”

In recent years, conservative thinkers and writers have debated a question among themselves: Has American culture been so thoroughly captured by progressives that retreat from mainstream life is the only sensible path forward? Some conservatives have taken Trump as a counterpoint to this argument, interpreting his election as the beginning of a long-term right-wing pushback against the dominant political order. Those who find themselves somewhere in between, however—wanting neither a full retreat from nor a full concession to the Trumpian way of politics—don’t necessarily have a clear path forward.

At least at Princeton, there seems to be hope. “We have gotten over these moments, these eruptions of no confidence,” said Allen Guelzo, a historian of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, during the conversation with George and other professors. “And I think we will get over this as well.”

Those in the room seemed to know that their status as intellectuals might not buy them the automatic credibility and power it once did. They also seemed well aware of the irony inherent in a bunch of elite academics sitting around, parsing the revolt of the populist masses. As one attendee joked, “We represent the people. Some of my best friends are people!”

And so the young conservatives of Princeton will head out into the world, hoping that their knowledge of Thomas Aquinas and John Locke has not been totally outmoded by memes, cable television, Twitter, and Trump. In this cloistered bastion, the work of grooming conservative elites will continue. “If I were the last man on Earth to believe this stuff,” George said, “I would still believe I’ve got the best product to sell.”

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The Struggle to Repay Student Loans

Each year, thousands of young people leave college with significant student debt. Most of those who choose the right majors, graduate on time, and find solid employment pay off their loans with little difficulty.

But students who never graduate, who choose the wrong majors, who take extra time to get a degree, or who can’t find lucrative, full-time employment often struggle with debt. A report conducted last year by Student Debt Crisis shows just how much student debt can burden young people. The report surveyed 7,095 adults with student debt from all 50 states in October 2018.

The survey found that many borrowers face financial hardship. In total, 65 percent of student loan borrowers reported having less than $1,000 in their bank account.

Borrowers spend a significant amount of their monthly budgets on student loan payments. Of all respondents, 30 percent reported having a student loan bill higher than their rent or mortgage bill. Another 56 percent said their student loan bill was higher than their health insurance bill. And 65 percent of borrowers reported having a student loan bill higher than their monthly food budget.

Many students struggled to make their loan payments. Eighteen percent reported being in default on at least one student loan. And 20 percent reported being unable to make their next loan payment.

Survey respondents also reported that student loan debt has prevented them from meeting certain financial goals. Eighty percent of respondents said student debt prevented them from saving adequately for retirement. Fifty-nine percent said it prevented them from making large purchases. Fifty-six percent reported that debt prevented them from buying a home. And 42 percent reported that debt prevented them from buying a car.

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