What am I missing in Lynn Arditi’s front page story in the Sunday Providence Journal, about the Rhode Island College student who says she experienced an unfair hearing when she accused a fellow student of sexual assault?  Honestly, it reads like the reporter is waltzing around something that would present the whole story in a different light.

The core of the complaint is that the accused young man was “represented” by a lawyer with “a professional connection to the college” during a hearing on the allegation.  According to the accuser, “Having a lawyer in the room supporting the person I was accusing of this crime was a serious intimidation factor. It was terrifying… I didn’t have any legal representation and I was hurting.’’

That looks like it might justify the prominent airing that her complaint has gotten in the state’s major daily newspaper, but the relevant details poke out of the fabric of the story throughout.  Consider:

• Right after that quotation, Arditi explains the “professional connection” that the lawyer had with the school, and she does so in a way that makes it seem as if representing the accused was part of his contract, but later on the story, we learn that “the accused student said he paid Turner $1,500 to represent him.”  So, one party in the hearing appears to have hired independent counsel, and the other was presumably free to do so.
• Additionally, the role that the lawyer was permitted to fill was quite different than the typical legal hearing.  Normally, the client remains mostly silent while his or her lawyer does all of the talking, as part of the actual legal battle.  In this case, the lawyer “was allowed to ‘silently’ advise the accused student but not speak for him.”
• If that’s the extent of the lawyer’s “representation,” then the accuser does not appear to have been without representation of her own.  “Leslie Schuster, director of RIC’s gender and women’s studies program [was] O’Donnell’s adviser at the conduct board hearing.”  That sounds comparable to what the lawyer was doing, and more importantly, the director of an entire program of study would seem to have a much more significant “professional relationship” with the college than a lawyer who has a contract with a campus non-profit funded through student fees.