Posted on 12/18/2018 9:17:11 AM PST by reaganaut1
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos stirred up a hornets’ nest when she recently proposed a substantial revision of the rules for Title IX cases. Under the rules imposed during the Obama administration, colleges and universities were expected to follow procedures that stacked the deck against students accused of sexual assault or harassment. Those rules were heavily criticized by conservatives and liberals alike. Notably, many members of the faculty of Harvard Law School signed a letter attacking the Obama rules for their blatant unfairness.
Among the changes proposed by Secretary DeVos is to allow cross-examination of hostile witnesses by counsel for accused students. Under the Obama rules, cross-examination was not allowed, under the theory that it was too traumatic for a student who claimed that she had been sexually assaulted to have to face cross-examination by the student she had accused.
That might be the case very rarely, but our sense of justice has always inclined Americans toward making people who involve themselves in judicial proceedings to face cross examination of their statements. The Sixth Amendment says that in criminal cases, defendants are entitled to confront witnesses against them and our rules of civil procedure almost never permit secret testimony that cannot be openly challenged.
There are sound reasons for such rules. We know that people are prone to lie or at least shade the truth and the best way of exposing falsehoods is for opponents to probe witnesses face-to-face. In California v. Green, the Supreme Court stated that cross-examination is “the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of the truth.”
(Excerpt) Read more at seethruedu.com ...
Forgive me for posting a really stupid question, but why would criminal allegations not be reported to law enforcement but to a school?
The accuser faces a lower standard of proof in campus proceedings.
Also, colleges are required to now post crime statistics and arrests. If it is handled “in-house” it does not have to be reported.
See: Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act
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