by Claude Opus 5.5
Defend or attack the “dual-track” model, in which universities and the criminal law run parallel processes with different standards, aims and sanctions. Is the duplication a feature or a failure?
In most common-law jurisdictions, an allegation of sexual assault by one student against another can trigger two separate processes: a criminal investigation and potential prosecution, and a university disciplinary process. The two tracks differ in nearly every respect: standard of proof, procedural protections, sanctions, decision-makers and purposes. The case behind these seminars displays the model’s features vividly. The university held a twelve-day hearing and imposed sanctions including expulsions; the district attorney declined to charge; nearly two years later, the criminal track has been reopened and transferred to a special prosecutor. This page defends a qualified version of the dual-track model, while identifying its pathologies.
The case for duplication as a feature
The first argument is functional differentiation. The two tracks answer different questions. Criminal law asks whether the state may condemn and punish a person for a public wrong. University discipline asks whether a person may remain a member of an educational community, and on what terms. R. A. Duff’s communicative theory of punishment helps here: criminal punishment communicates the polity’s censure; university sanctions communicate the community’s judgement about membership and obligation. Different messages require different procedures and standards.
The second argument is epistemic redundancy. Independent processes reduce the chance that a single institution’s errors determine every outcome. When the criminal track fails, as it often does in sexual offence cases because of the high standard of proof and evidential difficulties, the university track provides a second opportunity to address harm. Conversely, criminal proceedings provide a check on campus findings that may have been too hasty.
The third argument is remedial range. Universities can impose interim measures (no-contact orders, housing changes) and educational sanctions that criminal courts cannot, and they can act on conduct that is wrongful but not criminal.
The case for duplication as a failure
The first objection is inconsistency and legitimacy. When the two tracks reach different conclusions, as here, each undermines the other’s authority in public perception. A campus finding of responsibility followed by a decision not to prosecute is read as either campus overreach or prosecutorial failure, and neither institution can easily explain the divergence.
The second objection concerns rights. Respondents who participate in campus hearings may make statements later usable against them in criminal proceedings, while declining to participate risks an adverse campus finding. This places them in a dilemma that the criminal process’s privilege against self-incrimination is designed to prevent. Complainants, too, must repeat their accounts, often more than once, with cumulative harm.
The third objection is informational fragmentation. The tracks rarely share information systematically. In this case, the prosecutor reportedly never saw the university’s far more extensive record, so the decision not to charge was taken on a thinner evidential base. The duplication of process did not produce a duplication of scrutiny; it produced two partial views.
The fourth is the risk of institutional displacement. Where the university track exists, prosecutors may feel less pressure to pursue difficult cases, and universities may be drawn into adjudicating serious crimes they are poorly equipped to handle.
A qualified defence
The best response is not to abolish either track but to reform the interface between them. Three reforms follow from the analysis.
Explicit differentiation. Universities should frame their findings in terms of policy violations and community membership, not crimes, and should communicate clearly that their conclusions do not determine criminal guilt.
Managed information flow. Formal protocols should govern when and how university records are made available to prosecutors, with notice to the parties and safeguards against using compelled campus statements in criminal trials. This addresses fragmentation without destroying the campus process’s distinct character.
Sequencing rules. Institutions should have principled policies on whether to pause campus processes during criminal investigations, balancing the complainant’s need for interim protection against the risk of prejudice to either process.
A further consideration supports this conclusion. The alternative models each carry heavier costs. A single-track criminal model would leave many complainants without any institutional response, given attrition rates in sexual offence prosecutions. A single-track campus model would ask universities to determine serious crimes without the investigative powers, procedural protections or legitimacy that such determinations require. The dual-track model’s problems are problems of design, and design can be improved; the alternatives’ problems are structural.
Conclusion
Duplication is a feature in principle, because the tracks serve different ends and offer epistemic redundancy. It becomes a failure in practice where the tracks are poorly coordinated, as appears to have happened here. The appropriate response is better coordination, not abolition.