Augustana U, Former Student Agree to Title IX Lawsuit Dismissal: New at Reason

Another questionable college sexual assault investigation winds up in court.

Lindsay Marchello writes:

Augustana University and a former student expelled in the wake of a Title IX sexual assault investigation in 2015 have agreed to a dismissal of the student’s lawsuit against the university.

Koh Tsuruta, of Lake Mills, Iowa, and Augustana agreed in a motion made in federal district court earlier this month, The College Fix reported. Neither party nor their lawyers have discussed the reasons for the agreement or whether or not there were settlement terms.

“It was resolved to the satisfaction of the parties,” Vince Roche, the lawyer for the private school in South Dakota, said in Sioux Falls (S.D.) Argus Leader article. “That is all I can say.”

The dismissal also leaves unanswered a trail of questions about the alleged assault, the handling of the Title IX investigation and Tsuruta’s expulsion. The case points up once again the flaws in the Title IX process, the low standard of proof needed to find the accused guilty, the due process violations, and the lack of preparedness for the complexities of sexual assault cases on the part of universities.

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