ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, May 8, 1996 TAG: 9605080061
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Above
THE CASE PRESENTED by Christy Brzonkala is insufficient to prove gender bias by the university, a judge ruled.
A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed Virginia Tech from a lawsuit filed by a student who says she was raped on campus, ruling that Christy Brzonkala had not shown sufficient evidence that Tech acted with an "anti-female" bias.
Chief U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser's ruling does not affect the portion of her lawsuit against football players Tony Morrison, James Crawford and Cornell Brown.
But it means Tech's campus judicial system will not be scrutinized in federal court, where Brzonkala hoped the school would be forced to stop deciding felony sexual assault cases internally.
Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said Kiser's ruling proves the case involved "very few bona fide legal issues."
"But the public damage has been done" to Tech's reputation, he said.
Brzonkala's attorney, Eileen Wagner, said she would appeal.
"Based upon this decision, [Kiser] just doesn't get it," she said. "If you've never experienced discrimination, you can't ... understand how it works."
Brzonkala claims the university discriminated against her after she pursued campus disciplinary action against two football players she says raped her in September 1994. She says the players got preferential treatment as members of the all-male football team.
But in dismissing Tech from the suit, Kiser ruled that the case Brzonkala presented would not prove the university discriminated against her even if allowed to go to trial. Brzonkala brought what is known as a Title IX claim against Tech under a federal law that forbids gender discrimination by schools that receive federal funding.
Wagner said Kiser's opinion sets "an entirely too Draconian standard" for Title IX lawsuits and that she would appeal on the grounds that his standard was too high for dismissing a case before trial.
Kiser wrote that if, as Brzonkala argued, Tech gave Morrison special treatment, her being female was "incidental" because the school might have acted the same way if a male student were the victim. Tech's "intent was to allow an athlete to play on its team," Kiser wrote. "This intent was ... based on Morrison's athletic status, not the facts that he is a male and Brzonkala is a female."
Kiser also wrote that Brzonkala failed to provide statistics showing Tech's conduct was part of a discriminatory pattern. The one statistic she cited - that nine of the 13 rape complaints handled by the campus judicial system in 1992 and '93 resulted in disciplinary action - showed the opposite, he said.
If Tech does treat rape cases differently, it shows that the university "is sensitive to victims' feelings," Kiser wrote, since rape is still a crime that undeservedly stigmatizes the victim.
Wagner said she had been unable to get statistics from Tech on sexual assaults.
"I think all the colleges and universities across the country will see this and breathe a sigh of relief and go on with business as usual," she said. "As long as perpetrators feel the institutions are going to protect them, they'll go on doing these things. In order to stop them, we've got to make the institutions wake up and smell the coffee."
A campus judicial panel last year found insufficient evidence of rape against Crawford, for whom suitemate Brown provided an alibi. It found Morrison guilty of sexual misconduct and suspended him for two semesters.
Morrison was allowed a second hearing. That panel found him guilty only of abusive conduct, but again suspended him for two semesters. The university's provost, Peggy Meszaros, then reduced his punishment to probation and an hour of counseling. Wagner has maintained that someone in the football program was behind the reduction.
Hincker denied that, saying: "I believe the provost was preventing a football player from getting railroaded. She was saying there is absolutely no precedent for this finding" on an abusive conduct charge.
Brzonkala's suit against Morrison, Crawford and Brown alleges violations of the Violence Against Women Act and other offenses. All three have filed motions to dismiss. Kiser will hold a hearing on those motions June10.
Tech tried to provide justice to both Morrison and Brzonkala "and in the end, both students felt they were wronged," Hincker said. But Tech plans no changes to its judicial system because it would be hard to see how the school could handle the matter differently, he said.
The university, he said, "had no intent whatsoever other than to deliver a fair review of the facts."
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Brzonkala. color.by CNB