To the members of the Committee on Instruction (CoI) and the Committee on Organization and Policy (CoOP):

The Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault urges on behalf of students that the College modify its transcript policy to improve accountability in cases of sexual assault. In particular, we urge the COP to reject the inadequate proposal that the CoI has recently endorsed, and advocate instead for a robust transcript policy that meets both the actual needs of students and the manifest moral responsibilities of the College.

Dartmouth’s current policy strictly separates a student’s primary academic record — their transcript — from any behavioral record. Under this model, when a student leaves the College to pursue either further education or employment, their new institution must solicit the student’s behavioral history separately. This system leaves gaps that allow perpetrators of harm to evade accountability and continue committing harm at their new institutions.

If a student accused of serious misconduct resigns from the College before their case concludes, they are entitled to answer no if an employer asks whether they have ever been found responsible for a behavioral infraction. There is no incentive for them to disclose that they were once under investigation. Unless that employer seeks out the student’s separate conduct history — an extraordinary step that few employers consider to be part of their due diligence — they will never understand that behind the student’s no lurks a shameless evasion of justice. Even if the institution seeks additional behavioral information, they won’t be able to access specific, relevant flags to make an informed decision.

In cases where a student stays at Dartmouth long enough to be found responsible for serious misconduct, the situation is scarcely better. Dartmouth never discloses the student’s violation on their transcript, leaving this critical information concealed in inaccessible internal files. The Association of Title IX Administrators (ATIXA) cites multiple cases in which the absence of transcript notations allowed known rapists and intimate partner abusers to transfer schools, only to commit harm again in their new communities. According to the ATIXA, there are “dozens” of similar cases every year. [Source 1, 2, 3]

If flags about concerning behavioral conduct are not on the transcript, where else could they be found by an external institution? The College’s current method of alerting other schools to the behavioral misconduct of former Dartmouth students consists of the Dean’s Certification system. The presence or absence of a Dean’s Certification simply communicates whether a student would be welcomed back into Dartmouth’s community. But this is not enough. Not every institution requires a Dean’s Certification; certainly, most employers do not. And the evidence gathered by the ATIXA casts doubt on whether the Dean’s Certification is a sufficiently visible and clear means to appropriately convey the dire warning: this former Dartmouth student has a hidden judicial record that, if made plain to interested parties, would almost certainly impact their acceptance into other academic communities.

In response to debate and ongoing conversations about transcript notations, the CoI has recommended that the College attach a disclaimer to transcripts indicating explicitly that they contain no record of behavior. This is a marginal improvement at best; it is absolutely not a solution. The disclaimer is an obscure hint to future employers and schools that they have additional diligence duties beyond merely looking at a student’s transcript. As we have stated, this system requires schools and, particularly, employers, to take extra measures to uncover behavioral concerns. Even those who look for such information will only receive broad answers. At no point could another institution obtain specific information, that does not rely on the student’s self-report, about behavioral infractions such as a finding of responsibility in a sexual misconduct case. Evidence from across the nation suggests that these diligence measures do not keep our communities safe.

As a result of these concerns, the SPCSA recommends that transcripts bear temporary notations when a student resigns while actively under investigation for serious misconduct, such as sexual violence, that could rise to the level of separation from the College. These notations should be unambiguously worded so that no reasonable person can infer guilt from the fact of a pending investigation. Given the current Judicial Affairs practice of concluding all sexual misconduct investigations even when parties leave the college, the temporary notation would eventually be updated to reflect the finding that is made. This would ensure that no one receives a permanent mark if they are found not-responsible while closing existing loopholes that allow, and perhaps incentivize, evasions of accountability.

Further, the SPCSA recommends that transcripts bear permanent notations for students found responsible for misconduct punishable by suspension or expulsion. In accordance with the recommendations of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) and the ATIXA, these notations should clearly identify behavioral misconduct — as opposed to academic concerns— as the impetus for suspension or expulsion. These notations would provide employers and schools with clear, accessible, informative flags that help them make intentional choices about whom they welcome into their communities [Source 4, 5].

We will now outline our responses to the counterarguments and concerns that we are aware of regarding our proposed transcript notation policy. We hope to convey how every argument against our proposed transcript notation policy fails.

We have been told it is other institutions’ responsibility, not Dartmouth’s, to vet former Dartmouth students. This framing allows Dartmouth to shirk a shared responsibility. Dartmouth must give other institutions a chance to make informed decisions by disclosing appropriate behavioral flags that the College itself has identified. Dartmouth’s current method of record-keeping is subject to predictable and systematic misinterpretation that solely benefits perpetrators of harm. What is the purpose of investing resources into conducting fair, diligent investigations if the College does not communicate the outcomes of those processes to the future communities who may be impacted by the finding? Part of upholding accountability is communicating, and thereby upholding, investigative findings to institutions which have a stake in that knowledge. Even if Dartmouth’s current flawed policy meets some minimal ethical duty, it is plainly not the best that the College is capable of. Dartmouth cannot simultaneously lead the global fight against sexual violence and abdicate responsibility for the behavior of its former students.

We have been told that the transcript is properly an academic document and that behavioral notations are thus inappropriate. But Dartmouth itself keeps robust behavioral notations on internal transcripts, proving that the institution acknowledges the importance of documenting these flags. Moreover, nationwide, the transcript is not understood to be purely academic. Schools and employers use transcripts, and particularly the behavioral and academic flags that are present on the document, to make informed decisions about accepting people into their communities. In fact, multiple states already mandate a behavioral notation policy even more stringent than our proposal, and the AACRAO and ATIXA recommend the same. If Dartmouth treats external transcripts as strictly academic documents, it disregards established expectations across the country, ultimately misleading other institutions.

We have been told that it is difficult to decide in a principled way which acts should merit transcript notations and which should not. Thankfully, Dartmouth would not have to make this decision alone. The AACRAO and the ATIXA recommend transcript notations in all cases of behavioral misconduct serious enough to merit suspension or expulsion. Both bodies have noted that drawing the line at separable offenses also preserves the spirit of the transcript as an academic document, disclosing only circumstances so severe that they affect the student’s eligibility to continue their course of study.

We have been told that modifying the transcript is a slippery slope — that various parties are always vying for the transcript to change in service of some agenda. This is a non-response. If our proposal is justified, we believe that the change should be implemented. If the merits of other proposals, unrelated to our own, are justified, then we believe that those changes should be implemented. If there are other meritless proposals, then we believe those should be rejected. In short, there is no connection between whether the College adopts our limited changes and whether the College adopts further changes.

Lastly, we have been told that transcript notations are overly punitive. But this mischaracterizes both the temporary and the permanent notations. The temporary notations will apply only when a student indisputably commits an act of bad faith by leaving the college while under investigation for serious misconduct. These notations simply eliminate an existing loophole and perverse incentive, in which individuals leave Dartmouth without repercussions while they are being investigated for serious infractions. If a student is subsequently found not-responsible, the temporary notation will be eliminated. The permanent transcript notations will apply only in cases where the College has already elected to expel or suspend the assailant. Their effect is not to punish the assailant further, but to ensure that Dartmouth’s chosen punishment is clearly communicated to other stakeholder communities, to avoid putting those communities at risk. The notations we suggest are objective descriptions of plain matters of fact; they simply state the relevant judicial records and thus would contain no punitive content whatsoever. It is up to other institutions to decide what such a behavioral record means to them.

To outline the stakes of transcript notation policies, we want to review some vital data. First, we repeat that there have been numerous cases in which individuals have exploited transcript notation loopholes and gone on to repeat serious harm they committed at their prior institution in new communities. Furthermore, there can be no mistake — most sexual assailants are repeat offenders and are active threats to their communities. The lowest credibly reported rate of recidivism for sexual offenders is 25%. Rates has been found to be as high as 63% in a self-reporting study conducted in 2002. Furthermore, Dartmouth’s 2017 Sexual Misconduct Survey found that while fewer than 10% of the student body commits sexual assault, nearly 60% of the student body experiences sexual assault. These numbers are clear and unforgiving. Effective accountability for one act of sexual violence likely prevents countless future acts of harm. Lastly, the vast majority of rapists are never held accountable. According to Dartmouth’s 2017 Sexual Misconduct Survey, less than a quarter of the sexual assaults at Dartmouth are reported to any College resource. A devastatingly small number of those reports turn into formal complaints [Source 6, 7]. And when survivors of sexual assault do initiate an investigation with a formal complaint, it is often at great personal cost. We absolutely must protect the integrity of these investigations. Accordingly, we urge the CoI to reconsider its recommendation, and we urge the COP to endorse a sensible transcript notation policy.

Sincerely,

The Student Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault