UNC-Chapel Hill releases names of students found responsible for sexual misconduct

After a nearly 4-year legal fight, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has released the names of 15 students sanctioned for sexual misconduct through its secretive disciplinary process.

The release of the records comes three months after the state Supreme Court, in a close and contentious ruling, sided with a coalition of North Carolina media organizations that sued the university after it denied a 2016 public records request for the information. The coalition includes Capitol Broadcasting Co., WRAL's parent company, as well as UNC-Chapel Hill's student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel.

Released in a three-page document Wednesday afternoon, the records list the names of 15 students found responsible for sexual misconduct, along with the sanctions the university levied against them. They comprise 10 cases of sexual assault or sexual violence, four cases of sexual misconduct and one case of "deliberate touching of another's sexual parts without consent."

Punishments range from semester-long suspensions to explusions from the entire UNC system.

Although the original request asked for 10 years of records dating to 2007, the list doesn't include dates, in accordance with the Supreme Court's order.

No information about victims is included, nor did news organizations seek such information in their original requests or lawsuit.

Among the names released is Jalek Felton, a freshman guard on Carolina's men's basketball team who was suspended from the university in 2018 with little explanation.

Records released Wednesday show the university found Felton violated policies on sexual assault or sexual violence after a campus hearing. He was expelled from the UNC system, given an order of no contact and banned from campus for four years.

Reached Wednesday afternoon, Felton's lawyer, Kerry Sutton, took issue with the university's disciplinary process, which said included a "guarantee of confidentiality" for the students involved.

"These are hearings where the complainant doesn't even have to show up to be cross-examined by the accused or the accused's attorney," Sutton said.

She added that no criminal charges were ever filed.

Although she said Felton was devastated by the disclosure, she said neither of them diminished what the accuser says happened in the case.

A team of reporters at WRAL News is reviewing the records and attempting to contact others named for comment before publishing any details.

News organizations in the coalition first sought the records in September 2016 to shed light on the results of investigations by the university's quasi-judicial disciplinary bodies, which do not make their findings public. Those requests came amid a years-long federal probe into the university's investigation of sexual misconduct on campus.

Since the legal battle over the records began, the U.S. Department of Education has determined the university violated Title IX regulations in its handling of sexual assault cases and failed to follow federal law governing the reporting of crime on campus.

The Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act, designed to shield academic records from public disclosure, explicitly prohibits the release of most student information. But language in the federal law specifically carves out records related to violent and sexual crimes, saying universities may disclose three specific bits of information: the student's name, the violation committed and any sanctions imposed.

UNC-Chapel Hill argued in court that refusing to release those records – at their discretion – protected victims and the confidentiality of the Title IX process.

But the state's high court disagreed.

The 4-3 majority sided with a unanimousstate Court of Appeals decision that the state's public records law removes the university's discretion, making the records public.