Jennifer woke on a December 1994 morning, naked in the dorm room of Dennis, a man she had considered just a good friend. She was shocked when he told her they had had sex.
Dennis later would characterize it as wholly consensual, the outgrowth of a little too much beer and marijuana, but evidence of a budding relationship.Jennifer, who had passed out in his bed, called it rape.
Then a junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she turned to the student judicial system for help - and got it. She regrets that she also pursued the case in criminal court.
Dennis holds the opposite view. To him, criminal court provided the justice that the campus system denied him.
"If you're accused of rape at Carolina, you're guilty," Dennis said. "The whole thing was very political."
Campus courts don't just deal with cheating, underage drinking and other forms of student misbehavior. They have become increasingly involved in investigating and judging serious campus crimes.
Cases such as the one involving Jennifer and Dennis, who agreed to talk on the condition that their full names not be used, are generating concern about the way campus courts work - and whether they have any business handling felonies in general, and sexual assaults in particular.
To protect the privacy of students, campus court proceedings are nearly always secret, closed to the public and press. Attorneys say that men such as Dennis, accused of a serious crime, often are unable to get a fair trial. There is no due process and no legal representation. The accused can be suspended immediately from school.
Student courts, attacked a few years ago for being hostile or insensitive to women in sexual assault cases, have changed. With amended rules and judges trained by rape crisis counselors, student courts are ruling overwhelmingly in favor of the accusers.
Attorney Barry Winston, who represented Dennis in criminal court, says the campus system is fundamentally flawed. He believes every accused person should have the right to legal counsel, and to have his case tried before a professional judge.
"They say a student judge is just as good," Winston said. "I say, if you have an aneurysm, do you ask for a student neurologist?"
Gary Pavela, a national expert on student judicial systems, has long defended the concept of campus courts. But in an upcoming speech before the national association of student judicial administrators, Pavela plans to recommend that his colleagues turn away all sexual assault cases.
"We ought to be getting out of the business of adjudicating rape cases," said Pavela, who heads the judicial program at the University of Maryland. "Not because we can't do it, and not because the complainants don't want us to do it, but because we are taking cases that the larger community will not take."
Indeed, most district attorneys are hesitant to bring criminal charges in acquaintance rape cases.
A typical campus sexual assault has no independent witnesses, and alcohol is a factor in an overwhelming majority of cases. Prosecutors have learned from experience that this makes it difficult to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Many victims and their advocates continue to support the campus judiciary. It's faster than the criminal system, and the attacker is more likely to be punished - even if the most severe punishment is expulsion. Often, that is all the victim wants.
Jennifer pressed criminal charges.
"I was angry. I really felt at the time it was such a serious offense, just getting kicked out of school wasn't enough."
With young men and women testing their freedom and experimenting with drugs and alcohol, college campuses long have been fertile ground for acquaintance rape. But in 1985, a Ms. magazine survey stunned the nation with the estimate that one in four women had been sexually assaulted by the time they graduated from college. The survey found that 90 percent of the victims were acquainted with the attackers, and in many cases had dated them.
Universities began allowing accusers to be present during the entire hearing, not just to give testimony. They included the "rape shield" provision, which prevents the accused from bringing up the accuser's sexual history without cause. Schools began adding victim sensitivity sessions as a new pro-victim mentality emerged.
In Jennifer's case, a campus police officer read her letter to the panel at the emergency hearing: "If he had the nerve to do it once, who knows if something else might trigger the same behavior with another girl? No one else can control him, and he has proven that he can't even control himself. I strongly encourage the board to take the appropriate actions and prevent Dennis from being a threat to me or other women on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus."
Dennis was soon arrested by campus police and kicked out of his dorm. Just before a new semester was to begin, he was before an emergency disciplinary committee with little hope of a fair hearing.
Dennis decided not to testify. He said later that the dean of students told him it would do little good.
After deliberating maybe 20 minutes, the board suspended Dennis indefinitely, pending the outcome of his criminal trial.
"I thought the rule was innocent until proven guilty," Dennis said. "Not at the university."
In 1989, Jeanne Clery, a student at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., was raped and murdered in her room by another student. The man had entered the dorm through a back door left propped open.
Clery's parents sued the university, saying campus officials had known the door often was propped open but had done nothing to make sure it was closed. With their settlement, the Clerys founded an organization called Security on Campus.
It's a caution for other schools. Universities are liable for the safety of their students. That's why many have a policy that allows for the immediate suspension of someone accused of rape or another serious crime.
This system punishes students who later are found not guilty, but suspensions served are supposedly erased from student records.
Winston, attorney for Dennis, notes that suspensions show up in thorough background checks, such as those for law school applications or for certain government jobs.
"If I'm a student, I can get you suspended by making an accusation, and that can follow you for life," he said.
Winston also noted that honor courts will take evidence, without a lawyer present, "that the state will use to decide if you are going to jail for 40 years."
Legal experts such as Don Castleman, a law professor at Wake Forest University, said the suspensions may be exposing universities to legal risks.
"We must ask if the man has the same protections in the campus court as he does under the law. If not, then that council runs completely contrary to the U.S. Constitution. If they are expelling people without due process protections, it's absurd."
Pavela says it's only a matter of time before someone raises the point with a civil rights suit against a university.
"We keep getting caught in this buzz saw. First, we weren't being sensitive enough, we weren't coming out with the `right' outcome, and we were constantly beat up on that issue. Now schools are training their boards to the point where they do away with the presumption of innocence."
Jennifer thought Dennis would be convicted in a criminal court. She said she had made it clear to him that she wanted a platonic relationship. They had gone out and, after drinking beer and smoking pot, ended up back at his dorm room. She'd passed out, and he had had sex with her.
In the courtroom came other testimony, tales of skinny dipping on their first date, the gentle kisses they'd exchanged. And her testimony was that she could not remember much about what happened in that dorm room.
The jury didn't buy it. It deliberated just 45 minutes. Not guilty.
Jennifer fled the courtroom, sobbing. Dennis wept with relief.
"The law does not distinguish between stranger rape and acquaintance rape," said Carl Fox, Orange County district attorney. "But a jury does. With a lifetime penalty hanging in the balance, it is very difficult to convince a jury to convict."
His office has not obtained a conviction in an acquaintance rape case for at least five years. The conviction rate in the UNC honor court is close to 100 percent for the last three years. That's why so many women turn to the campus system.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)