A few days before classes started in August, Mei Fujisato, a sophomore international student from Japan, went to a friend’s room to hang out, catch up, and watch a movie. It was a typical reunion of friends after a summer apart.

What she didn’t know was that her friend was drunk, looking for sex, and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Fujisato said he tried to make a move on her about four or five times and she told him she wasn’t there to do anything sexual.

“He was too drunk, and he kept ignoring me saying no,” Fujusato said.

She cried while her assailant forced her to have intercourse.

“I was really empty,” Fujisato said of when she left his room.

A week later, Fujisato reported the incident to her adviser while hospitalized for unrelated reasons. Her adviser encouraged her to talk to Sarah Ryan, who is the director of the Women’s Center, and to report it to Public Safety.

The night before her first conversation with Ryan, she talked to her assailant. At that point, she wasn’t going to report it; she didn’t want to ruin her assailant’s life.

But Ryan encouraged her to report it, especially after Fujisato revealed he had trouble respecting boundaries during the spring prior to the assault.

Public Safety opened an investigation and the case went to DePauw’s sexual misconduct hearing board.

University court: the sexual misconduct hearing board

After Public Safety investigates an alleged violation, Julia Sutherlin, the assistant dean of students, determines whether or not the findings warrant a charge from the university. Sutherlin then meets with both the complainant and the accused to inform them of the charges, the rights throughout the process, and the resources available to them.

Each side has the availability of a trained hearing adviser to help them with the process and offer support.

If the accused student admits to the allegations, Sutherlin provides a sanction. If the allegations are denied, the case is forwarded to the chair of the board.

The board consists of university staff trained to only hear cases pertaining to the sexual misconduct policy. Each case is heard by a panel of three of the seven board members, one of which is always the chair.

Typically, the hearing includes opening and closing statements from both parties, witnesses called by the board, and questions from the board.

Hearings move forward regardless of the amount of participation from the students involved.

The accused and the complainant can’t speak to one another, and the room is set up in a manner that minimizes the potential for visual contact between the two parties. Both students have the ability to ask questions of witnesses during the hearing.

The board then deliberates in private. They determine whether the accused student is responsible for the allegation using a preponderance of evidence as the standard of proof, which is lower than the legal system’s required “beyond a reasonable doubt.” If the accused is found guilty, the board sets the sanction.

Both students are notified of the board’s findings and have the ability to appeal, which is heard by the Vice President of Student Life.

Reporting trends

Each year, DePauw and other institutions of higher education participating in federal financial aid programs are required to publish a report containing crime data for the past three calendar years because of a law known as The Jeanne Clery Act.

The Clery Act, as it is commonly referred to, was passed in 1990 after Jeanne Clery was raped and murdered by another student in her residence hall at Lehigh University.

Clery’s parents argued that had the crime data been made available prior to Clery’s attendance at Lehigh, Clery wouldn’t have attended the university.

Prior to the data set for 2014, colleges and universities were not required to separate rape from other sexual crimes. The change is a result of an amendment to the Violence Against Women Act. Instead for data before 2014, sexual assault fell somewhere between an unwanted kiss or sexual gesture to rape.

In 2012, seven sexual crimes were reported at DePauw, six of which have been classified as rape, and in 2013, 15 sexual crimes were reported, with 10 of them classified as rape.

The number of cases classified as rape for 2012 and 2013 have potential for error because they occurred prior to the legislative change separating rape from other sexual crimes.

“If I don’t know, I default to the higher,” Angela Nally, director of Public Safety said.

This means if Nally did not know exactly what category the sexual assault fell into, she listed it as the most serious sexual crime: rape. For Clery purposes, rape also includes sodomy and sexual assault with an object, whether that object be genitalia, fingers, or another object.

The statistics from 2013 put DePauw with the highest reported number of sexual assaults within the 13 members of the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA).

In 2014, seven sexual crimes were reported, with six of them being categorized as rape. Oberlin College took over the most reported sexual assaults for 2014 within the GLCA, after DePauw’s numbers fell to match 2012’s numbers once again.

It’s likely that many more sexual crimes go unreported. An October 2011 article in The DePauw said, “According to a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice, 81 percent of on-campus and 84 percent of off-campus sexual assaults go unreported.”

In October 2014, The DePauw reported “the Campus Climate Survey suggests that about 12 percent of DePauw’s female population have said that they were sexually assaulted on DePauw’s campus. This means that approximately 144 female students have been sexually assaulted.”

More than 60 percent of sexual assaults go unreported, according to an estimation by Rape Abuse and Incest National Network, or RAINN.

Assuming this is the national average and DePauw is average in reporting, DePauw should have 86 reported sexual crimes. Even if this number is divided among the three years of data to account for a student’s entire time at DePauw, the reported number would need to be 29 a year. This number is more than four times larger than the current seven reported sexual crimes.

DePauw recently finished a three-year campaign for increased prevention encouraging reporting after being one of 23 schools to receive grant money from the Department of Justice, which administrators have pointed to as the reason for the spike in reported numbers in 2013.

Relying on the board, despite secrecy and inconsistency

Of the six rape cases in 2014, one was not a student, and one was a confidential Sexual Assault Survivor Advocate, or SASA, report.

Sexual crimes reported to SASAs are not necessarily investigated. Assaults are only investigated if the victim decides to make a report to Public Safety.

The remaining four rape cases from 2014 were investigated by Public Safety and forwarded to both the prosecutor and the sexual misconduct hearing board.

“Any time a Public Safety report was filed, it went to the prosecutor,” Nally said. “We send them all to the prosecutor.”

Yet, none of those four cases or any of the other 22 reported rape cases since 2012 have resulted in criminal charges, including non-rape sexual crimes.

In fact, September saw Putnam County’s first rape case in more than a decade, including non-campus rape. The Banner Graphic reported that according to the Prosecutor, Timothy Bookwalter, “It has been more than a decade since a rape charge was filed in Putnam County.” The September rape charge was not related to the university.

Currently, the records created by DePauw’s Public Safety are unattainable through public records requests from DePauw. As a private institution, DePauw is not subject to most open records laws. The university’s tax form, Form 990, as well as spending based on sports, particularly based in gender equality, are the only exceptions.

The separation of DePauw’s Public Safety from the Greencastle Police Department goes far beyond the half mile geographical distance. Greencastle Police are subject to open records requests as long as the case is not open and currently under investigation. This means that even though Public Safety consists of trained police officers who act in the same manner with the same powers as their local counterparts, their records are never open, unless subpoenaed.

The discrepancy between public and privately funded police forces is currently being questioned in the Indiana Supreme Court after ESPN filed a lawsuit against The University of Notre Dame to gain access to their campus police records. A St. Joseph County Superior Court judge ruled in favor of Notre Dame in April, and the case has gone on to appellate courts. Several other states have had similar cases spring up, including a case in Ohio stemming from Otterbein University.

As a result, with a lack of evidence, oftentimes, a sense of justice, including for Fujisato, is contingent on the outcome of the sexual misconduct hearing board, which is also shrouded in secrecy. The outcome of each case, the deliberations of the board, and even who serves on the board is secret.

In fact, the only information available is the process outlined on DePauw’s website, the number of cases heard by the board and whatever either the complainant or accused decide to share.

However, a lawsuit against DePauw in 2014 by then-junior Benjamin King offers some insight into the board’s process behind closed doors.

On Dec. 8, 2013, a female student, identified as J.B. in court documents, reported to Public Safety that King had violated DePauw’s sexual misconduct policy on Dec. 6.

Initially, J.B. did not want to make a formal complaint to Public Safety. However, she did want King to talk to DePauw’s Title IX Coordinator, Dorian Shager. Renee Madison has since replaced Shager as Title IX coordinator.

J.B. changed her mind and told DePauw she wanted to pursue charging King of sexual misconduct on Jan. 22, 2014.

Public Safety heads these investigations and then turns over all findings to the assistant dean of students. Public Safety tried to interview King.

According to the court documents, “Because DePauw has an agreement with the county prosecutor’s office that it will forward the results of any sexual misconduct investigations it conducts to the prosecutor for review, Captain [Charlene] Shrewsbury began the interview by advising King of his Miranda rights and informing him that the interview would be videotaped.”

It continues saying that “not surprisingly” King refused to be interviewed.

Three weeks later, on Feb. 12, King received a letter informing him that the university was charging King with sexual harassment and nonconsensual sexual contact.

During those three weeks, Public Safety interviewed five students in support of J.B.’s testimony, two of which were her roommates. It wasn’t until five days after notifying King of the charges that Public Safety interviewed a student in support of King’s testimony.

King requested the hearing, which was originally scheduled for Feb. 20, be delayed a week so he could have more time to prepare, but the request was denied. The hearing took place on Feb. 24, after delaying for another scheduling conflict.

During the hearing, each student serving as a witness were asked to rate “‘on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being not drunk at all and 10 being very drunk,’” how drunk they thought J.B. to be and how drunk they were.

A Sept. 17, 2014 article from Minding The Campus titled, “DePauw Punishment Halted In Sex Case,” author KC Johnson points out, “All four of these witnesses spoke to an investigator between 47 and 54 days after the part in question. It seems highly unlikely that the typical college student can make an intoxication diagnosis about someone else seven or eight weeks after a party at which each of these students, too, was consuming alcohol.”

The board found King guilty and expelled him.

The reasoning was based on discrepancies in the testimony given by King immediately after it happened and two months after the fact. These discrepancies mostly had to do with word choice surrounding what happened. According to court documents, the board felt that King had exhibited “opportunistic behavior” by targeting J.B. while she was in an intoxicated state.

King appealed the board’s decision to Cindy Babington, who at the time was the vice president of student life, a position now held by Christopher Wells.

King argued several points including: failure to conduct a prompt investigation, failure to conduct a thorough investigation by choosing not to interview witnesses revealed by other witnesses, failure to investigate and consider King’s level of intoxication, failure to consider the possible effect of prescription amphetamines in J.B.’s system combined with alcohol which can result in “alcohol blackout” without showing symptoms, failure to request the text messages that lead the board to decide King acted in a predatory manner, failure to consider inconsistencies in J.B.’s reports and the fact that the main evidence against King came from Shager, who is married to Ryan. Ryan served as the adviser for J.B. throughout the sexual misconduct hearing board process.

Babington reduced the sanction to suspension for the remainder of the semester and the next semester.

The court granted King the preliminary injunction to allow him to finish classes for the semester.

According to The Washington Post, “schools that receive Justice Department grants related to violence fill out surveys on how they resolve internal sexual assault complaints.” They compiled a list of nearly 100 schools that had answered at least one of the four semi-annual surveys between 2012 and 2013. DePauw listed zero expulsions, three suspensions, one reprimand and two cases that were acquitted. They also listed 23 dismissed cases. This number is more than twice that of any other school on the list. These numbers are different than those reported for Clery during the same time period.

Six speakers, four campaigns, a $300,000 grant and stagnant reporting

Since the roughly $300,000 Department of Justice grant in 2011, DePauw has brought several well-known speakers such as Alan Berkowitz, David Lisak, Jackson Katz, Lea Hegge, Laci Green and Dorothy Edwards.

The number of campaigns and programming matches the number of speakers. From the “Elephant in the Room” campaign to the most recent “It’s On Us” campaign, DePauw has provided at least four different types of programming concerning sexual assault.

In addition to “Elephant in the Room” and “It’s On Us,” DePauw has also participated in the “Wingman Campaign” and created “DePauw Gets Graphic,” which was formerly known as “Party House.” “DePauw Gets Graphic” is a series of bystander intervention based skits performed by first-year mentors to spark conversation with first-years about what it means to be an active bystander.

This semester several student organization leaders as well as members of the administration went through training from the “Green Dot” initiative. “Green Dot” places an emphasis on active bystander intervention.

Yet, despite increased emphasis on prevention and reporting, there has not been an increase in reporting, with 2013 being the exception.

A December 2011 article in The DePauw reports Nally as saying the number reported then was “low for a campus having repeated discussions about sexual assault prevention.” Since 2011, the number of reports has increased some, but barely.

DePauw has a large Greek-affiliated population of about 69 percent of students. In fact, it’s not uncommon for DePauw to be ranked number one in amount of Greek life by the Princeton Review.

The heavy presence of Greek life is often associated with high-risk drinking and sexual assault.

Grant Walters, president of Sigma Chi Fraternity at DePauw and a senior, said that his chapter, in particular, participates in at least one “journey module” a semester, or a voluntary program through their nationals that costs the chapter about $600 and results in a day of education around sexual assault.

Walters and other chapter presidents each said that sexual assault prevention is part of their new member education processes as well as risk management plans for registered parties.

Earlier this month, all chapters released a video of members reciting the “It’s On Us” campaign pledge.

The pledge, which can be found online, says, “I pledge: To recognize that non-consensual sex is sexual assault. To identify situations in which sexual assault may occur. To intervene in situations where consent has not or cannot be given. To create an environment in which sexual assault is unacceptable and survivors are supported.”

The release of these videos has been met with some criticism.

Sophomore Laura Harmon posted a criticism of the videos on Facebook.

“While individuals in these fraternities may believe in this cause and practice bystander intervention,” Harmon wrote, “their organizations as a whole… are doing nothing to ensure that each and every one of their members understands consent.”

Harmon requested that fraternities work harder to make sure that members understand what sexual assault is and prevent it.

“While I do support both the ‘Green Dot’ program and the ‘It’s On Us movement,’ I am fundamentally opposed to fraternities appropriating their words and their labels before they actually adopt their values,” Harmon wrote.

In a later post to clarify, Harmon said that the previous post was not targeted at one specific fraternity, but rather the fraternity system as a whole, in which brotherhood is prioritized over preventing sexual crimes.

“Some of the members I’ve talked to are even for the idea of disaffiliating rapists and those who routinely sexually harass their guests,” Harmon wrote, “but they know that it would never happen because of structural barriers within their fraternities and/or their brothers’ general apathy.”

While Harmon has faced some backlash for the posts, several students have posted in her defense.

Senior Lily Reed was one such student.

“For the men who participate in these videos in order to promote conversations on consent, who are curious about the pain of others instead of growing defensive by it, who want to listen, learn and support voices like [Harmon’s}, this is not aimed at you, and I know there are plenty of you that exist,” Reed wrote. “But for those of you who thought their actions and self-reflection stopped at participating in this video, who are more concerned with your reputation than the labored process of actually ending sexual assault, you are wrong for calling yourself an ally.”

Junior Clay Langly, who is also chapter president of Sigma Nu Fraternity, thinks there is a lot more fraternities can be doing.

“They need to continue to improve upon their education of both new and already current members,” Langly said. “That’s an important part. You can’t just tell new members and never bring it up again.”

He stressed the importance of continued education, adding that he doesn’t think sexual assault is limited to assailants intentionally harming people.

“The people who are at risk of committing those kinds of acts aren’t typically aware that those are issues, a lot of the time. They don’t realize that they’re hurting the people,” Langly said. “[Sexual assault] can also be not understanding boundaries and stuff. And if you don’t understand the boundaries, then you don’t understand that you don’t understand the boundaries.”

Fujisato’s quest for justice

The issue of fraternities holding members accountable came up with Fujisato as well.

After her assailant was found to not be responsible by the sexual misconduct hearing board, she made a Facebook post about the situation.

The post started with, “Today, my school, DePauw University failed to make the campus a safer place for students.”

She went on to say what happened to her and why she decided to report it. Because of her decision to go home on medical leave, she decided not to participate in the case anymore.

“I was told by my friend that the person just got initiated into a fraternity on campus,” the post read.

Fujisato said she didn’t want to appeal.

“I couldn’t provide anything more,” she said in an interview.

She wrote the post out of anger.

“I wanted people to know the school wasn’t doing the right thing,” she said. “If the reason for the result was that they couldn’t get enough information [because she was no longer participating], they should have done something about it.”

After the post, Fujisato had two other women come forward to say that they were also sexually assaulted by the same individual. Fujisato said each of these women are currently pressing charges though the university’s sexual misconduct hearing board, though the cases have yet to be heard.

“Sexual assault isn't just an incident at parties," Fujisato said. “It doesn't have to involve drugs or alcohol. There are people out there who can't respect others' feelings. I want people to know that non-consensual physical interaction is a real crime.”