Brett Sokolow, NCHERM Group President and CEO, interviewed in Campus Security Report on the civil rights investigation model

Brett A. Sokolow, an attorney who serves as the executive director of ATIXA and managing partner of NCHERM, a law and consulting firm specializing in higher education risk management, recently explained how the model works during a webinar.

“If you look across our entire society, you will find that just about every entity but colleges and universities uses a form of civil rights investigation procedures, so we really are the anomaly,” he said. Federal case law has established that students must be given due process rights prior to being disciplined. But too often, such cases devolve into episodes of he said/she said. That can further traumatize the victim or victimize a wrongly accused individual. The civil rights model ensures the rights of the accusing and accused party are roughly in balance. “It’s not about creating parity but equity,” Sokolow explained. “If we do something for one person, why not do it for the other?”

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