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Oregon State University President Ed Ray on Wednesday met with Brenda Tracy, a woman who has recently publicly told her story of being raped by four men, two of them football players at the university in 1998. Ray had pledged earlier that the university would investigate what happened. An investigation at the time yielded relatively light sanctions against the athletes. After his meeting Wednesday, Ray wrote to the campus about what the investigation found, and The Oregonian published that letter.
"What we can share is that the student conduct environment in 1998 that dealt with off-campus matters involving a non-student was very different nationally – and at OSU. If this case was reported to us today, we would pursue significant student conduct actions – even if this violence took place off-campus and involved a survivor who was not a student," Ray wrote. "I assure you that today we would respect the survivor's wishes and their confidentiality. We would work with the survivor to fully pursue conduct sanctions including the suspension or expulsion of those OSU students who committed such an offense. And we would work to stop the sexual misconduct, prevent a recurrence and assist the survivor."
He added that he had "asked Oregon State officials to evaluate possible retroactive student conduct actions in this case, but they determined that law will not allow the university to take such action. Changing how the criminal process was managed in 1998 in this case is beyond OSU's control."
