Most people here haven't been in college for a long time, so you might not be aware of a disturbing change which has taken place in recent years.
Title IX is a federal law that prohibits discrimination based on sex for schools and programs that receive federal funding. Unfortunately, it has been extended in various ways to browbeat campuses into doing things they really don't want to do. This is because "sexual discrimination" is an extremely broad term, and schools basically have to do whatever the government says in order to avoid losing their federal funding.
During the Obama years, Title IX was extended to "sexual harassment", and in 2011, Obama's people wrote a letter to these schools with "guidelines" regarding how they must handle rape accusations.
The concern -- a valid one -- was that some schools were not properly investigating rape accusations, and that they must step up efforts to bring rapists to justice. Okay, nobody can really argue with that one.
However, the letter also demanded that these schools conduct internal investigations and hearings BEYOND the criminal investigation.
In case that part doesn't sound bad to you, think about what that really means.
It means that, when accused of rape on a college campus, all due process laws which are central to this country's justice system are out the window.
In cases of accused campus sexual assault, even if there is no criminal action taken by campus law enforcement, the accused still must face heavily-biased "hearings". In these hearings, defendants have no rights and are given little ability to defend themselves.
Among the complaints:
- There is no "double jeopardy" rule. If cleared of wrongdoing at the hearing, the accuser has a right to appeal and have another hearing against you.
- If you hire an attorney to represent you, the attorney is not allowed to speak at the hearing.
- In many cases, you are presumed guilty until you can prove yourself innocent. If there is lack of evidence on both sides, you will often be "convicted" at this hearing, and face a possible expulsion from school.
- Unlike the criminal standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt", guilt at these hearings was to be ascertained by having "50.01% certainty". So if it was concluded that your guilt or innocence could go either way, but very slightly favors guilt, you will be judged guilty.
To be clear, the 2011 letter was not setting hard standards, but rather was providing "guidance". However, this was code for, "If you don't bend over backward to implement what was discussed here, we are taking your federal funding", so nearly all schools receiving such funding panicked and made these changes.
There were widespread incidents of young men being falsely accused of rape (or highly dubious cases where two people had sex while blackout drunk, and neither remembering much). These men were having their lives ruined by "investigations and hearings" brought against them, most of which would never have held up in any credible criminal courtroom.
Unfortunately, many on the left supported these changes. Some took the attitude of, "A woman claiming rape must always be believed, no matter what", which completely contradicts everything we have established in our criminal justice system since this nation was founded.
I do believe rape is a problem on college campuses, and I support stiff criminal penalties against convicted rapists. However, it was horribly irresponsible to set up these kangaroo courts, where young men could have their lives ruined by baseless accusations.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who wasn't a very good appointment, has finally done something right and sensible.
These 2011 changes haven't been rolled back just yet, but DeVos has stated that they will be reviewing the situation, and changes are likely to come soon.
Here's a good editorial about it from the NY Times, of all places: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/o...-title-iv.html
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Originally Posted by tommyt
