College Senior Expelled One Week Before Graduation for Sexual Assault

A fourth-year student attending The University of Chicago was expelled after he sexually assaulted and verbally abused another female student. The student, a Sigma Chi fraternity member, was expelled on June 2nd, just a week before his expected graduation.

According to The Chicago Maroon, the university’s Student Disciplinary Committee hardly ever expels students accused of sexual misconduct even when they are found guilty. Implications are that strong evidence exists in this case, but still, the expelled student denied the claims, appealing the decision.

Both of the students’ names are unreleased.

“The two students began dating during the fall quarter of 2017, when he was beginning his fourth year,” The Chicago Maroon said. “She said that after they broke up—ending a physically and emotionally abusive relationship—he assaulted her.”

After the relationship was over he started to show abusive tendencies. She said one night during the winter quarter, he assaulted her while she was drunk.

“I had gone to a party, had a lot to drink, and he took advantage of me. And after that, I was very much shaken up by it. It really affected me like nothing else in my life really had before. And then, it got worse because afterward, he was texting me, wanting to hang out again,” she said.

“And I said no because I was like, ‘I really don’t want to see you anymore, it makes me uncomfortable.’ And he started saying a lot of really mean and hateful and nasty things to me, and that’s kind of where I got to the point where I was like, ‘This isn’t something I can deal with on my own.'”

Around the end of winter, she received a “no contact” directive after her meeting with the Deputy Title IX Coordinator of the school. The order said that the two students were not to communicate with each other. A while after the meeting she planned a trip to Mexico with friends, where she later learned that her assaulter “belatedly joined a trip planned by several Sigma Chi brothers to visit the same city and stay at the same hotel where she and her friends would be staying,” The Chicago Maroon said.

From there, after returning to campus for spring semester, she met with the Associate Dean of Students to follow through with the case.

“The thing that was sticking with me was that even after all of this, he didn’t think that anything he had done was wrong,” she said.

I had a very, very good experience in my proceedings… I felt very listened to at all times,” she said, trusting the assistance she got in light of the incident. “I felt like they were doing everything they could to help me and to protect me.”

Since then, the male student was suspended and later expelled from his fraternity that stated that they do not condone his behavior.

“I did not do this. I swear to that with every ounce of my being,” he said in a statement to The Chicago Maroon. “I remember the events in question and I am absolutely certain that they did not play out the way the complainant describes them.”

He claimed that the university unjustly took action action against him in the case.

“The system is heavily biased against individuals like me. My family and I are working-class first generations immigrants. My parents barely speak English. We didn’t know anything about dealing with these sorts of hearings,” he wrote.

“I was presumed guilty from the start,” he added.

The female student said she is pleased with the results and felt that justice was served, stating that it does not matter how far along a student is in school for the administration to make these decisions. She hopes that women become more empowered because of this and said that ultimately it was the student’s actions that got him expelled.

“Things very much worked out in the way that they should, and I’m super grateful for that because I know that’s a rare thing,” she said. “I hope that it becomes more commonplace, but I think that in this case, everything was handled exactly in the way that it should be.”