In 2014, a University of Oregon freshman known anonymously as Jane Doe made a chilling report to the Eugene Police: the student alleged that she had been cornered in a bathroom and repeatedly gang-raped by three Ducks basketball players.
Jane had survived the barbaric incident, but her ordeal was far from over. She pursued justice through the school’s official channels and did what most would do when confronted with such unthinkable trauma — she sought therapy.
But neither of these resources provided the safe haven Jane had been promised. UO purposefully delayed their internal disciplinary proceedings, allowing the three players to finish their sports season before expelling them.
The players – Damyean Dotson, Dominic Artis and Brandon Austin – were ousted from the university two months after the incident occurred, but their punishment was hardly draconian. Despite the UO Director of Student Conduct deeming them guilty of sexual misconduct, the students were banned from campus for a mere four years. Their records were scrubbed, allowing them to transfer to other colleges and continue their careers without consequence.
However, this crass prioritization of sports revenue-generated profit over safety was just the beginning. In a shocking violation of trust, the UO General Counsel’s office worked with the UO Counseling Center to access the private records from Jane Doe’s post-assault therapy sessions.
The UO Counseling Center shared these sensitive transcripts with the university’s lawyers in an attempt to preemptively formulate a counterclaim — in simpler terms, powerful institutional officials rifled through transcripts of the woman’s darkest hours, twisting her own words against her to squash a lawsuit she hadn’t even made yet.
This atrocious act was brought to public attention when Karen Stokes, the Counseling Center’s director’s assistant, defied orders and showed the paper trail to Jane Doe’s therapist, Jennifer Morlok, who had not been informed that her patient’s records were being distributed behind her back.
As dedicated mental health professionals, both women were appalled — therapists are sworn to protect their clients’ sensitive information, not to deliver it into the malevolent hands of litigators.
As mandated by her oath, Morlok reported this infraction to the Oregon Bar and the Psychologist Board, breaking the story. News of their whistleblowing circulated and Stokes was dismissed by the university, while Morlok cited social ostracism as the reason for her resignation.
In the light of this news, Jane Doe filed a lawsuit against UO for mishandling her sexual assault claim, asserting that the university had abused her therapy records and that the basketball coach, Dana Altman, had recruited her alleged assaulter Brandon Austin despite knowing his history of sexual misconduct.
This was the moment they had been waiting for. UO replied with a vicious counterclaim, in which they accused Jane Doe of fabricating her claims and damaging the credibility of real victims with her “frivolous” complaints.
The court ruled in Jane Doe’s favor and the student settled for $800,000, but the grievous lack of privacy at the root of this case has not been amended. UO’s actions were, and still are, technically legal.
As an extension of an educational institution, UO Health Services are regulated by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, instead of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which regulates most federal healthcare. As FERPA is the less-protective of the two privacy acts, students have far fewer privacy rights when seeking care on-campus than they would with an off-campus, private practitioner.
A legal loophole entitles UO to access their students’ personal healthcare records whenever they are deemed necessary for a litigation defense — i.e., if the school thinks the student is going to sue the institution. This lack of confidentiality is especially dangerous with regards to sensitive matters like therapy, sexual assault response, substance abuse counseling, STD screenings and contraception — all treatments which UO Health Services provides.
Following the 2015 controversy, the school amended its confidentiality policy to grant students more power over their own records, but their new policy still entitles the school to subpoena information in the instance of an “actual or anticipated lawsuit.” This update is a step in the right direction, but the underlying vulnerability of FERPA-based healthcare has not been fully erased.
Each fall, campus lampposts flutter with fliers encouraging students to enroll in the UO Health Plan — but only in the fine print does the university acknowledge the plan’s inadequate protections of privacy.
UO junior Emma Deutschman says she was not made aware of the privacy policy during her visits to campus clinicians. “If it was in any of the agreements, I definitely scrolled right past it,” Deutschman said.
University of North Carolina law professor and disability rights specialist Katie Guest Pryal advocates to avoid FERPA-regulated campus healthcare entirely, but the solution isn’t so simple — for many students, especially those whose parents don’t have health insurance or have coverage in a different state, the insufficient UO Health Plan is all they can afford.
The current system preys on students who can’t afford off-campus healthcare, portraying privacy as a luxury to be bought and vulnerability as a price to pay.
Additionally, navigating off-campus healthcare can be confusing.
“All the off-campus psychiatrists didn’t take my insurance or they weren’t accepting new patients,” Deutschman said. “There’s a lack of knowledge on who is in practice in Eugene and where to find them; it’s just not something that’s advertised very much. UO makes frequent emails about getting healthcare and therapy services. It seems convenient since it’s right on campus, but then the waitlist is twelve months long.”
But how do we fix such a malignant systemic issue? On a local level, it should be required to verbally and explicitly inform all incoming students, parents and university therapists that any information shared in UO Counseling can be used against the patient in the case of a lawsuit. Students have a right to know their risks when utilizing campus services, especially to prevent themselves from possible self-incrimination.
Nonetheless, warnings are only a Band-Aid solution. The crisis will not be resolved until FERPA is amended to grant students greater rights to privacy — at the very least, schools shouldn’t be able to weaponize student’s private information in a counterclaim until after the student makes an initial lawsuit.
Like Morlok, most UO counselors are trustworthy professionals who strive to provide high-quality care for students.
Unfortunately, they aren’t the only ones with access to your private information — school officials can also obtain your records, and they are less interested in ensuring your mental wellbeing than in covering the school’s back. If you ever face such a situation, you should not trust the institution to keep your best interests in mind. No student should have to go through what Jane Doe went through.
As a major institution, UO wields extensive power over its students. This is more than just a local or isolated issue; this is a national power struggle in which institutions’ financial interest in preventing costly lawsuits increasingly encroaches upon their students’ rights.
Any students who seek on-campus healthcare must be aware of their limited rights to privacy. All students should be careful about what they share with campus healthcare practitioners. When you share something with a UO counselor, you might unintentionally be sharing it with UO lawyers as well.