Though the issue of a College date rape policy has been framed around formulating a definition, the Date Rape Task Force's original mandate was to reform the College's disciplinary process and to establish effective education and counseling programs.

"The thing that has always been most important to me has been to raise awareness said former Assistant Dean for Co-education lanet A. Viggiani, the Task Force's co-chair. "We needed to develop procedures that people can understand and to have programs in place to educate people."

Virginia L. MacKay-Smith '78, Viggiani's successor as assistant dean, said the Ad Board needed procedural changes for dealing with sexual assault. "There were ways to handle date rape before the Task Force, but pretty much the whole community recognized that those procedures needed to be modified," she said.

Beyong the campus activism, many of the measures to formulate a set procedure for handling date rape cases are required by federal legislation.

The Higher Education Reauthorization Act passed last summer mandates that schools allow a student charging sexual assault, which includes date rape, as well as the accused student the right to appear before a disciplinary board.

In the past, MacKay-Smith said the students charging date rape had been treated simply as witnesses to the alleged offense and were allowed only to issue a written statement to the Ad Board. While Jewett says the issue had been considered in the past, he says of in-person testimony, "Generally that's never, been done before."

While extensive changes have since been made to Ad Board procedures, especially in the procedures especially in the procedures of the investigative subcommittees, it appears many of the changes came from within the administration rather than the Task Force report.

When a student first registers a complaint, the student must file a written statement with the senior tutor, according to MacKay-Smith. The tutor will also advise the student to speak with the "Victim's Witness" advocate in the Middlesex District Attorney's office to see whether the student would pursue formal charges.

The senior tutor of the accused student asks the student to respond to the charges in a written statement oral discussion with the advisor.

The student then writes the statement before seeing the complainant's written charge. After the student writes the statement the student sees the complaint and may respond to any discrepancies.

"This was something the Task Force felt pretty strongly about," MacKay-Smith said. Yet she also said these procedures had been informally used prior to the Task Force's report.

"There were lots of changes that had been in the making but were formalized in the Ad Board report," she said."

For each disciplinary case involving accusations of date rape, the Ad Board sets up a subcommittee to investigate the charges.

Recently the Ad Board has set up several standing subcommittees, proposed by Jewett, rather than an ad hoc committee which handled cases previously.

Jewett says that although many of the proposed changes had been in front of the Ad Board before, they represented what the Task Force had wanted. "While some of the changes had been discussed in front of the Ad Board before, they reflected what the Task Force thought was important to happen," he says.

The strongest input from the Task Force has been in the roles of student advisors, said Jewett. Generally, both students in a complaint are advised in the proceeding by their senior advisors or senior tutors. The advisors inform the students about Ad Board ground rules and counsel them in the investigation.