Title IX

Posted here because this affects every current and future student (including some football players). We went round and round on this topic during the Baylor investigation. Take a knee for civil rights, because they are dying at the hands of fringe activists.

http://www.startribune.com/colleges...lts-provokes-questions-of-fairness/394672721/



For the past five years, the federal government has threatened to cut off funds to any school that fails to respond quickly and aggressively to reports of sexual assault. Since then, it has launched more than 325 investigations against colleges and universities.

The result, says a growing chorus of critics, is that colleges are under pressure to brand students as rapists, and kick them out of school as quickly as possible, without the kinds of protections they’d find in a real courtroom.

“It’s a tremendously unfair dynamic that’s playing itself out,” said Joseph Cohn, a civil liberties lawyer with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Colleges are “practically tripping over themselves to reduce due process so that they don’t land on a [government] list of schools under investigation,” he said. And the federal government is “taking an overwhelmingly one-sided approach to this issue.”

At St. Thomas, officials say that there’s nothing one-sided about it, and that they take pains to be fair to both sides in such emotionally fraught situations. The university, said Nora Fitzpatrick, an associate vice president, is trying to enforce a student code of conduct, not mimic a real courtroom, with battling lawyers and hostile questions. “This isn’t a legal proceeding,” she said. “We are trying to assist both parties and not retraumatize them by having it be a confrontational situation.”

John Doe didn’t see it that way. Once accused of sexual assault, he contends, he faced a “rigged and unfair disciplinary process” that was stacked against him from the start.

Good to see.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news...against-colleges-punished-them-sexual-assault

The case joins three other legal wins for accused students in the past two months, and at least 10 in the last year. Some legal experts, including the federal and state judges deciding the cases, say the flurry of recent successes for disciplined students may show how some colleges and universities are eliminating “basic procedural protections” in an attempt to combat campus sexual assault.

“In over 20 years of reviewing higher education law cases, I’ve never seen such a string of legal setbacks for universities, both public and private, in student conduct cases.” Gary Pavela, editor of the the Association of Student Conduct Administration's Law and Policy's Report and former president of the International Center for Academic Integrity, said. “Something is going seriously wrong. These precedents are unprecedented.”

So mr. Pavela thinks it is more important to let accusations run amuck, then to get it right? Wonder if he has ever been accused wrongfully of something. People that makes broad based, unrealistic comments such as he did, live in a fantasy world.

Not condoning bad illegal behavior. Have no problem with a zero strike, permanent suspension, expulsion for serious bad behavior.

However accusations, perceptions are not infallible, let alone always accurate. If you are accused of something you should be able defend yourself, even attack a malicious, untrue, unfair accusation.

I had a friend of mine (a policeman) have his stepdaughter (Jr in high school) accuse him of sexual assault (reported to police department). I know him and the mother fairly well and was shocked. Obviously a very big deal to all involved. Well, turns out the girl has a history of behavioral problems and likely assorted psychological issues (I'm not privy to). After a preliminary investigation she finally came clean and no formal charges were pursued. I'm confident without the mother intervening this guy would have been in a he said she said.

Contrary to popular assumption police officers are oftentimes brought up on criminal charges for assorted issues. My colleague sat on a jury for the trial of a policeman accused of rape. Turns out this woman was known as a professional prostitute (inadmissable in court!) and they had a history of run-ins.

Anyone that works with the general public long enough will eventually understand the dark pits of human behavior, incentives, motivation. In short, there are many, too many, nut jobs out there. False accusations in many arenas is commonplace, for financial, career, political, or just sociopathic reasons, eg revenge, etc. Throwing out due process in thes Title IX cases cannot be allowed to proceed.

Pompous Elitist said:

I had a friend of mine (a policeman) have his stepdaughter (Jr in high school) accuse him of sexual assault (reported to police department). I know him and the mother fairly well and was shocked. Obviously a very big deal to all involved. Well, turns out the girl has a history of behavioral problems and likely assorted psychological issues (I'm not privy to). After a preliminary investigation she finally came clean and no formal charges were pursued. I'm confident without the mother intervening this guy would have been in a he said she said.

Contrary to popular assumption police officers are oftentimes brought up on criminal charges for assorted issues. My colleague sat on a jury for the trial of a policeman accused of rape. Turns out this woman was known as a professional prostitute (inadmissable in court!) and they had a history of run-ins.

Anyone that works with the general public long enough will eventually understand the dark pits of human behavior, incentives, motivation. In short, there are many, too many, nut jobs out there. False accusations in many arenas is commonplace, for financial, career, political, or just sociopathic reasons, eg revenge, etc. Throwing out due process in thes Title IX cases cannot be allowed to proceed.

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All very good points by you and tundra. Anytime there is a he said, she said situation, someone is probably lying and it is a terrible thing for one telling the truth. A lot of sociopaths is right.

Universities shouldn't be in the criminal justice business for serious crimes. We have a criminal justice system that is full of professionals, it is mature, complex, and works the way it does for all sorts of good reasons.

There was an Outside The Lines episode about this topic recently. They talked to a really good FCS (I believe) football player who was accused of sexual assault by his ex girlfriend. He says he never really got to defend himself, that he was labeled as guilty right away. Was kicked off the team and is playing at a low level school now because no one will touch him.

They interviewed a woman (don't remember who she was with) that essentially said if the school favors the accuser even as little as 51-49, they should kick the accused out of school, no questions asked.

Sorry I don't remember all the specifics. It was an interesting episode.

I agree the schools have no business in deciding innocence or guilt.
Where the schools have fallen down in the past is if the accused male is an athlete and the alleged victim tells the school and not the police the school covered it up.
Too drunk to agree to sex is a too often the setting for these episodes. Very difficult to prove one way or the other.
Campus police departments and even city police departments have often favored the accused if an athlete.
The Baylor and FSU behaviors are examples of this. The Feds may be overeacting to these examples.
An example of injustice to the accused was the MN BB players accused of rape in Madison long ago. The world crashed down on them and their coach but the players were never convicted.