Your article demonstrates the immense risk that universities or other institutions take in adjudicating on allegations of behaviour meeting a criminal threshold (“Students accused in university rape hearings call in lawyers”, News). Universities have no adequate locus in which to judge criminal matters, nor the skills or necessary legal powers to investigate them. Of course, with the criminal justice system failing so comprehensively to deal with such offences, it is entirely understandable why victims would prefer the seemingly simpler route of an internal investigation.
But if a university “convicts” a student and expels them for something that constitutes a serious criminal assault, then in our information age they could effectively blight the individual’s entire life and career prospects. Small wonder that accused students and their families wish to involve barristers. If victims and witnesses are not provided with equivalent support, it is an unfair process.
