Last Updated on March 13, 2020
John Doe was a foreign male student who attended Williams College in Massachusetts until he was suspended for not investing in a long-term relationship with a foreign female student he had engaged in “kissing and touching” with.
The John Doe was accused of not engaging in further romantic relations due to a root in “cultural insensitivity,” and was suspended because of this reason from Williams College.
This is all according to the lawsuit filed against Williams College.
“Both the unnamed Hispanic student ‘John Doe’ and his accuser ‘Sally Smith’ are foreign students. She accused him of sexual misconduct not because he acted without her consent, John claims, but because he was ‘culturally insensitive’ after their amorous encounters,” as reported by Alexander Pease of UMASS Boston.
According to John Doe, there were several aspects of the investigation that he was subjected to unfairly and subsequently meant he had disadvantages during the Williams School’s investigation.
For one, Williams School would not agree to a witness “face to face.” This would involve the board that decided to suspend the male student refused to personally evaluate the credibility of both parties concerned in the case.
John Doe was also refused by Williams School to offer evidence in his defense. Allegedly Sally Doe had a long history of “repeated accusations of cultural insensitivity,” which would have been cause to reasonably doubt her claims against this most recent male student.
“The college wrongly found John responsible based on ‘a flawed disciplinary process’ where gender bias was a ‘motivating factor, the suit claims, citing biased and stereotypical training materials for the Title IX panel,” as further reported by Pease.
Judge Mark Mastroianni, who granted the Williams ̉permission to pursue this lawsuit while maintaining anonymity has approved other similar cases against private institutes in Massachusetts.
In a case involving Amherst College, the lawsuit was settled out of court, and therefore not analyzed during a trial.
The Williams College Code of Conduct clearly defines that “consent once given may be withdrawn at any time.” This wasn’t the case with Sally who tried to withdraw her consent after the encounters, as judged by her text messages to John Doe.
Sally “expressed anger about what she saw as Doe’s cultural insensitivity around their prior interaction” – failing to seek a romantic relationship with her after showing physical affection.
While John told Sally he was “emotionally unavailable,” he again asked to kiss her, and she agreed again. The suit claims that he “asked Smith before initiating any new touching and did nothing without her consent.”
in addition to the sudden shift in how Sally described their encounter, she also has insinuated to the John Doe that she had “lots of people ready to hurt him” because he didn’t want to date her after they made out consensually.
After a while of not succumbing to the threats of Sally, she finally filed a formal Title IX complaint now claiming that the two sexual encounters were nonconsensual.
