Endeavoring to Do Better

1980s Carleton Spotlight

The Call Is Coming From Inside the House

These victims knew their rapists—sometimes they lived next door

In the early 1980s, the Women’s Caucus raised the alarm: people were being sexually assaulted by other students at Carleton, and there was no process for dealing with it. In October 1981, two victims spoke to the Carletonian for “A Look at Rape on Campus” about the difficulties they faced getting support from the college after their assaults. President Robert Edwards commissioned an official policy on ”sexual harassment and physical violence,” which passed in the spring of 1983. Hailed as one of the first of its kind, the policy gave victims six months to file a complaint with the dean of students, who had sole authority over what charges would be filed and how they would be adjudicated, either by him or the Judicial Hearing Board. It named a range of offenses, with sexual assault being the most serious. Two findings of sexual assault would result in expulsion. And it also created a system of CSA-appointed student “sexual harassment advisors,” advocates who would counsel survivors and advise them on their options. But the policy wasn’t perfect, and confusion over its terminology began almost immediately. For starters, the policy defined sexual assault as the worst instance of “sexual harassment,” which was like including a felony in a list of misdemeanors. And as complaints began to pile up, its shortcomings came into sharp relief.In September 1984, a freshman sexually assaulted his next door neighbor in Myers. The rapist, later given the pseudonym “Peter Poe'' to protect his privacy, assaulted her a second time and then assaulted another floormate in the spring of ’85. Another male student, later pseudonymously called “Frank Foe,” began assaulting women students in the fall of 1986. When survivors met with Dean Cris Roosenraad (1983-’93), he discouraged them from calling the police and said there was no such thing as a charge of sexual assault, downgrading their accusations to “advances without sanctions,” which the policy defined as unwanted touching or kissing. He applied the policy and refused to accept a rape accusation because nine months had elapsed since the attack. And he dismissed one assault simply because Poe denied it. In a private adjudication with Foe and one accuser—the hearing format Foe was allowed to choose—Roosenraad lectured the victim because she’d been drinking at the time of her attack, saying that made it hard to decide if an assault had actually occurredAs Roosenraad minimized complaints, offenders became bolder. Foe may have taken a lesson from his hearing—he soon assaulted a woman who was passed out drunk. Poe’s fourth accusation of assault led to a hearing with the JHB, only his second, after which he was suspended for a year. Five of his victims met with Roosenraad to complain about the leniency but were told that Poe couldn’t be expelled because his previous conviction was for “advances without sanctions.”Students pushing for safety and accountability began to perceive that their goals might not be aligned with the priorities of the administration. Some formed the Student Movement Against Sexual Harassment, which hosted films, expert speakers, and a mock date rape trial. Others graffitied names on a list of dangerous men in a library bathroom. And in 1987 students proposed several substantial revisions to the sexual harassment policy, including allowing seven years to submit complaints, matching Minnesota statutes; prohibiting a victim’s sexual history from being used in hearings, conforming with national law since 1975; and mandating stricter punishments, with a range of penalties specified for each level of offense. Though Roosenraad expressed his “personal misgivings” to the College Council about prescribed punishments, they approved all of the reforms.But a backlash was building. A professor complained In an anonymous letter to the faculty, that “radical feminists” were behaving like “sharks on a feeding frenzy,” imperiling academic discourse. President Stephen Lewis (1987-2002) and Roosenraad called a meeting to scold victims’ advocates for “ruining the futures of young men.” And a letter to the editor in the Carletonian from a male student said accusations of assault were creating “a climate hostile to discussion and debate.” Lewis created a committee on discrimination and the protection of free expression to explore this talking point, and, in the fall of 1989, registered his approval that five of the eight convocation speakers focused on threats to free speech.Lacking support from the administration, survivors, sexual assault advisors, and SMASH worked together to leverage pressure from outside. They consulted with a lawyer about discrepancies between Carleton’s punishments and those imposed by the legal system. And they contacted the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch, which ran a small story in April 1988. But the Northfield lawyer demurred, and the paper undermined its own coverage with an editorial saying the concerns raised by “a dozen students, mostly women'' was not “convincing evidence.”Carleton’s serial predators apparently weren’t daunted. Poe returned from his suspension and immediately began harassing one of his victims, violating his no-contact order. She asked to file a complaint, but Roosenraad told her that he hadn’t put the order in writing so there was nothing he could do. He warned her that Poe might do something more serious to her if she didn’t just drop it.Foe was accused of another rape and in early March 1989 was supsended for a year. A few weeks later Roosenraad let him return for his finals. Then, another student accused him of rape, and he was finally expelled. Roosenraad invited him to return yet again, for senior comps. When students protested, he was escorted off campus, and two of Foe's victims wrote an op-ed saying if students hadn’t objected to his presence, Foe would have been allowed to graduate, “nullifying everything we endured in pressing charges.”Little did they know, Roosenraad told Foe privately that if he finished his coursework elsewhere he could still apply for his Carleton diploma.In May 1989, students on the sexual harassment policy committee proposed new changes, including reducing the dean’s role in investigations and providing the JHB with legal training. A legal consultant was hired to advise them, but in the fall she proposed her own draft, which included neither the students’ recent proposals nor the changes they’d fought for and won in 1987. It also eliminated the student sexual harassment advisors, expanded Lewis’s authority over cases, and completely omitted the charge of “sexual assault.” The Social Policy Committee was flown to campus during winter break in December 1989, ostensibly to review a compromise, but instead they were asked to discuss only the consultant’s draft. The meeting lasted 16 hours.What the students on the committee didn’t know is that four of the nine students who reported assaults by Poe and Foe were preparing a lawsuit. Fifteen days after the marathon meeting, the survivors sued Carleton and Roosenraad in federal court against for mishandling their cases. Their lawyer told the New York Times that Carleton “knew that these men were dangerous . . . and took no steps to assure that they would not victimize other women.”