But as the movement rolled on, I increasingly wondered what would happen to perpetrators once they were booted off campus. More and more students and faculty, it appeared, were being removed from school grounds, but no one was proposing solutions, at least not publicly, for where they should go. At first, it didn’t seem like a particularly pressing question: I agreed with the former college dean who told me in 2014 that a school’s ultimate responsibility was “to make a safe community for all students so they can learn.” The fates of those who committed assault or otherwise abused their power were nobody’s priority.

But that didn’t mean students and professors vanished once exiled. Instead, I watched institution after institution simply “pass the trash” — a term for what happens when schools let reportedly abusive faculty flee elsewhere, without alerting their new employers to the allegations against them. Teachers quietly moved from high school to high school; professors covertly transferred colleges. I watched the same dynamics play out among students when I reported on a college admissions consultant who helped expelled young men put what she called their “best spin” on misconduct allegations so they could go back to school, their new classmates none the wiser. Readers were horrified: one campus activist, Abby Woodhouse, wrote an open letter in response, describing the relief she felt when her own college assailant was expelled.