UChicago rarely expels students found responsible for sexual assault, records show

The University of Chicago rarely expels students who commit sexual assault, a WBEZ analysis of nearly two decades of school records shows, leaving the door open for most survivors to come face-to-face with their attackers on campus.

Between 2007 and 2025, the university expelled just seven out of 36 students that a disciplinary committee determined had committed sexual assault, according to UChicago reports detailing whether students were found responsible for sexual misconduct and, if so, how they were disciplined.

Nineteen sexual assaults were punished with suspension, with some students allowed to return to campus in as little as nine weeks, reports show. In the other 10 cases, students who committed sexual assault were put on probation or given a warning.

Scrutiny of how universities hold students accountable for sexual violence has intensified following an alleged gang rape at Cornell University. The university accused two of seven students involved of sexual assault, according to the New York Times, and both were expelled. The other five were suspended, put on probation, or given writing assignments.

Following two recent reports of sexual assaults with ties to the University of Chicago, students there want college officials to establish more stringent minimum sanctions for sexual violence.

“Universities remove students for plagiarism,” said Nicole Bedera, a sociologist who studies campus sexual assault and wrote the book “On The Wrong Side: How Universities Protect Perpetrators and Betray Survivors of Sexual Violence.” “That's not illegal. That is not a crime. That is just a norm that they have set.”

Bedera said many universities, not just UChicago, allow students who have committed sexual assault to stay in school and graduate. In New York, where state law requires universities to report how sexual misconduct is disciplined, 11 campuses that enroll at least 10,000 students on average per year did not expel a single student for sexual violence from 2018 to 2024, according to reporting by USA Today.

“We're asking our schools right now: ‘Why is this not a norm that you care about?’” Bedera said. “Why are you happy to have the name of your institution on the diploma of a violent person?”

Most students do not report their sexual assaults to college officials, according to a 2020 report based on survey data collected by the Association of American Universities.

At UChicago, when students do report an assault, an associate dean reviews information from the survivor and alleged perpetrator and either dismisses the complaint, works with the two sides to resolve the complaint administratively or refers it to a discipline committee made up of students, staff and professors from across the university.

Illinois law requires colleges to report to the attorney general how many students are suspended, expelled or otherwise disciplined for violations of sexual misconduct policies. At UChicago, the faculty senate also requests this data, and the university maintains more detailed annual reports about the discipline committee’s decisions online. But the reports do not explain why students found responsible for sexual assault are or are not expelled.

UChicago spokesperson Gerald McSwiggan said in a written statement that the university takes reports of sexual misconduct “extremely seriously, with care and support for victims,” and that members of the university-wide disciplinary committee are trained on the school’s harassment, discrimination and sexual misconduct policy.

“Because the policy covers a wide range of sexual misconduct, the committee carefully determines sanctions on a case-by-case basis after a thorough review of the nature and severity of the conduct involved,” McSwiggan wrote.

Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times file

Many survivors leave college after reporting sexual assault

During the 2023-24 school year, UChicago’s disciplinary committee determined a graduate student who’d been accused of sexual assault was responsible for drugging and videotaping someone engaged in sexual activity while they were unconscious. Committee members put the graduate student on probation and banned them from holding student leadership positions.

In the 2021-22 school year, a student found to have sexually assaulted another UChicago student was initially suspended, but later expelled, after the committee found the student had committed two more sexual assaults.

“The perpetrators of sexual violence in those spaces are on a fast track to be in control of our social institutions moving forward,” Bedera said. “If this is how they're taught to seek power and privilege, if this is where they are taught impunity — that is a lesson that follows them after they graduate.”

There is a lesson that follows survivors too, researchers and advocates say.

Christina Zuba, an attorney with the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation who supports survivors through campus sexual assault investigations, said her clients often ask themselves: “Can I stay if I lose my case, and can I stay if I win my case and he's not removed from campus?”

Many decide to leave, she said.

That’s true nationally. Two in five survivors surveyed in 2020 by the advocacy group Know Your IX took a leave of absence, transferred or dropped out of school after reporting their assaults to college officials.

Survivors who stay in college often battle mental health challenges and struggle to go to class and focus on their studies, according to the 2020 survey data from the Association of American Universities.

Zuba said colleges and universities need to do more to support students through these challenges and to keep them safe.

“If a person wants to continue on at that school to reclaim their life, or to refuse to have their life further upended or damaged by the harm another person caused to them, they should be able to do that,” Zuba said.

For too many survivors, she said, the support they need never comes.

While many students who commit sexual assault stay in school and eventually cross the commencement stage, survivors often fear running into the person who hurt them, which, combined with the trauma caused by their attack, can derail their education, leaving them without a degree and with thousands of dollars in student debt.

Lisa Kurian Philip covers higher education for WBEZ in partnership with Open Campus.