Since the murder of Katy Benoit, the University of Idaho has claimed it aims for transparency. The tort claim filed by the Benoit family in December will hopefully show just how transparent university leadership has actually been.
In the days following the murder-suicide, information was dumped on the community about the situation and sexual relationship between Bustamante and Benoit. But even with the thousands of documents released by the university, establishment of an independent review board initiated by President M. Duane Nellis and changes to the university’s policy regarding student-faculty relationships, questions still linger and the answers have been elusive.
One of these is listed among the Benoit family’s complaints and has continuously been evaded — that university officials had knowledge that Bustamante placed a loaded gun to the head and into the mouth of Benoit yet did not inform the police. Despite that information, the university continues to insist it did everything it could to protect Benoit, a 22-year-old student who sought help when she felt endangered.
Typically, the university has been as transparent as is convenient, allowing the media access to some officials — regardless of their knowledge of the incident — and denying it to others. Ultimately, the university has skimmed the surface of transparency and settled for a superficial level permitting a limited vision of the procedures in place to prevent events like that of Aug. 22 from happening again.
With the filed tort in the system, hopefully this will change. Subpoenas have a way of doing that.
It is no surprise the Benoit family is moving to sue the university. Since the incident occurred, the question seemingly has never been if it would happen — just when. Unfortunately, cases like this are often settled behind closed doors without ever seeing the light of a courtroom — and that would be a shame in this case.
There is a lesson to be learned from what happened to Benoit, but the only way to accomplish that is to know without a doubt everything about the case. Not even a trial can assure this, but it is closer than anything we’ve seen so far. Ideally, there should be a sense of justice and closure for the Benoit family, and the UI and Moscow communities need to feel that the people who make decisions are doing so with the students at the core of those decisions.
UI officials have repeatedly said they believe they did everything to avoid the tragedy, but the Benoit family obviously does not agree. Now it’s time for the courts to give the final word.
— ER