How Did Dartmouth Get The Money For Their Sexual Violence Program

Dartmouth Reaches $14 Million Settlement in Sexual Abuse Lawsuit

Nine women had accused Dartmouth professors of sexual misconduct. The women and the college said on Tuesday that they had reached a settlement in the case.

Credit... Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist for The New York Times

Aug. 6, 2022

Dartmouth College and nine women who claimed they were raped, sexually assaulted or harassed aside their professors said on Tuesday that they had reached a $14.4 cardinal settlement, in a case that forced someone-inquiring in academia almost the system of mentoring and promoting graduate students in the sciences.

The women accused three Dartmouth professors in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, whose research included studies of physiological property desire and attractiveness, of coercing them into an alcohol- and sex-saturated political party culture in the human behavior lab that they led. The professors, all men, used their might over their students' academic careers and future employment to keep them from complaining, the women same.

A "21st century Animal House" atmosphere took hold as far back as 2002, while the college presidential term looked the another way, accordant to the lawsuit. The case prompted protests from students and alumni about how the college handled sexual actus reus complaints.

The suit was filed against the university, not directly against the professors — Todd F. Heatherton, William M. Kelley and Paul J. Whalen — who emeritus or resigned after Dartmouth affected to revoke their tenure. The professors do non face any commercial enterprise consequences from the small town. But they could still make up found liable through other venues, like criminal pursuance.

In a joint announcement happening Tuesday, the women said they were satisfied with the closure, which was much inferior than the $70 million in damages that they originally sought. The women and the university said that they were provision to work together to create a amend climate along campus.

For its part, Dartmouth did not let in liability. But Philip J. Hanlon, Dartmouth College's president, praised the women for coming forward.

"Through this litigate, we have learned lessons that we conceive volition enable us to root prohibited this behavior immediately if it ever threatens our campus biotic community over again," Mr. Hanlon said.

The full inside information of the settlement were not unveiled on Tues, and the parties asked the court to give them until Aug. 20 to do so. The suit was originally filed by heptad women, tardive united by two many, on behalf of a class of students who said they were affected by the professors' behavior. It was not clear how many students would be enclosed in the class, and lawyers said that was one of the details that would be clarified in the final settlement.

The women said they were "bucked up by our humble contribution to bringing restorative Do to a body of Dartmouth students beyond the named plaintiffs."

The case mobilized Dartmouth alumni and women in the sciences, who were outraged by the allegations that women were unscheduled to last sexual harassment as the price of academic advancement. Dartmouth alumni organized to set out pressure on the college under the hashtag #DartmouthDoBetter. An investigator at the Nationalistic Institutes of Wellness, Lauren Atlas, asked for volunteers in the scientific community to serve as mentors to female graduate students.

The alumni aggroup was scholarly of Dartmouth's assertion or so the closure Tuesday, career it "self-seeking" and "publicity goaded." The alumni, led by Diana Whitney, a 1995 graduate of the college, known as on Dartmouth to dig deeper. "What was tamed the organization that allowed this abuse to develop, get ahead unchecked and worsen over time?" the group asked.

The alumni likewise called on the college to acknowledge its "wrong tactic" in trying to draw the three nameless "Jane Energy Department" plaintiffs in the causa to reveal their identities. The college had argued in court papers that anonymous plaintiffs could not properly represent a class.

Dartmouth has adopted a number of new policies that will constitute enclosed in the resolution, including a requirement that theses and dissertations be overseen by a commission rather than by a single adviser. "This will ensure that a graduate student testament never again glucinium matter to the potentially problematic power imbalance of a single advisor," aforementioned Justin Anderson, a spokesman for the college.