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Thursday, July 17, 2025

Sex offenders tricky issue for UW officials

A UW-Madison junior with a third-degree sexual assault conviction has decided to move out of a University Housing residence hall where he has resided since August, even though university officials said he is not a threat to community safety. 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, university officials are struggling to establish a policy to deal with sex offenders at the university. 

 

 

 

UW-Madison officials learned of the individual's conviction in January, following notification of the UW Police by the Wisconsin Department of Corrections in late November or early December, according to Capt. Dale Burke of UW Police. However, after convening a group to assess the individual's case, they determined that he did not pose a community safety risk. Nevertheless, university officials are still working to formalize this process, saying they dealt with this individual's case appropriately, but \fortunately that was on the low end of the spectrum,"" according to Burke. 

 

 

 

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Burke said his department was notified that a student with a sexual assault conviction was living within their jurisdiction in accordance with the Campus Sex Crimes Prevention Act, which was enacted in October. 

 

 

 

Previously, the university was not notified when a registered sex offender moved on campus or began attending the university. Instead, only the Madison Police Department was made aware of such cases in the area. According to Casey Nagy, executive assistant to the chancellor, the MPD chose to defer their responsibility to report offenders to the community through use of the Wisconsin Sex Offender Registry Web site, which allows people to search for sex offenders by name or location. But UW-Madison officials said they want to do more in such situations. 

 

 

 

""Our view was that we wanted to examine these cases a little more closely or individually [than the MPD would] to see whether, in our estimation, we should take a different approach or add on to that with some kind of additional information, but that we should very definitely handle each case on its own merits, look at the facts involved and make our best prediction about what community safety interests were at issue, what individual privacy interests were at issue,"" Nagy said. 

 

 

 

Since the university had not previously been notified of such situations, this individual's case presented unforeseen challenges for administrators, who said they were in the early stages of developing a protocol for such scenarios. 

 

 

 

According to UW-Madison Dean of Students Luoluo Hong, who is part of the group of university administrators addressing this issue, their policies were far from set in stone when they became aware of this individual's conviction. Hong said questions still loom regarding how the university will handle cases involving sexual assault offenders, particularly when on-campus housing is involved. 

 

 

 

""One of the things we're talking about is, what is the policy that we would like to have relative to housing. We don't have that answer yet,"" she said. ""Do we have a specific policy dealing with a specific instance like this? No. Not yet."" 

 

 

 

Hong said university administrators are struggling to balance the interests of community safety and those of the individual. 

 

 

 

""There is a real balance here that we're trying to engage in and one is the person's rights as a citizen. He has already paid his dues, if you will, and is out in the community fair and square, so we certainly don't want to violate his rights. But there is a balance between preserving community safety. The bottom line is, this is an individual who has paid his debt to society and he has the same right to education as every other student. The question we're asking is, does he have the same right to housing?"" Hong said. 

 

 

 

University Housing officials said they did contact the individual upon learning of his conviction to discuss whether a residence hall placement was still most appropriate for him. 

 

 

 

""[We said to him,] 'here are some options that you would have. What do you want to do?' And one of those was, 'you can just stay where you are,'"" said Paul Evans, director of University Housing. 

 

 

 

Despite this, Nagy said the position of the university has always been that the individual is not a threat to campus safety and that is why university officials have not chosen to disclose information about his case. 

 

 

 

""We did not believe that there was a community safety issue generated by the specific facts here and that it would be inappropriate for us to basically label this individual with a scarlet letter where people wouldn't care about the context,"" Nagy said. ""They would simply consider it a label. And we didn't feel that was appropriate given the facts that led to his particular record."" 

 

 

 

In an effort to formulate a policy relevant to sexual assault convicts attending the university, Nagy said a group of university unit heads formed. This group included representatives from the Dean of Students Office, UW Police, University Housing and Legal Services. This group is the starting point for the process Nagy said is being formulated. 

 

 

 

""[The group] will have a shifting membership depending on whether the individual involved is a student or is a faculty member or is a staff member so that peer representation in the decision is available,"" he said. 

 

 

 

Nagy said university officials are mindful that this group must remain small given the sensitive nature of their duties. The group will convene when situations regarding sexual assault offenders arise to assess the facts of the given case and determine whether or not additional disclosure is necessary or appropriate. 

 

 

 

Burke said these decisions are difficult. 

 

 

 

""In this kind of thing, there's never a right answer and a wrong answer because it's not defined,"" he said. ""It's a balancing test. Every case is different and all the circumstances are different."" 

 

 

 

Nagy said he agrees. 

 

 

 

""We do the best we can with any circumstances in which people feel they have the right to know more,"" he said.

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