Posted on 08/02/2015 4:59:33 AM PDT by Kaslin
"The price of a college education should never be the risk of a sexual assault," Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., told a Senate hearing Wednesday. Too many colleges don't treat rape, she observed, as "the violent felony that it actually is." Her solution is the bipartisan Campus Accountability and Safety Act, or CASA, which would require college campuses to designate confidential advisers to victims of sexual assault and establish rules for campus investigations of sexual assaults.
Gillibrand means well; there's no question about it. But Congress telling American universities how they should handle campus rape truly is an instance of the blind leading the blind. If the goal is to treat campus rape as the violent felony it is, don't expect deans and assistant deans to conduct investigations -- unless you want to over-politicize the process. If you want to treat rape as a crime, leave assault investigations to the police.
When you think about it, it doesn't make any sense to treat rape differently just because it happened on a campus. Victim activists support allowing students to bypass the judicial system by appealing to university tribunals, which could result in perpetrators being expelled or removed from campus. "We're going to throw him off campus," Kevin O'Neill, executive director of the Fraternity and Sorority Political Action Committee, told me. If a sexual predator is kicked off campus but free to roam the streets, the public at large will be less safe. If victims file complaints with their colleges but not cops, sexual predators win.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, rape and sexual assault rates are greater for women ages 18 to 24 who are not in school (7.6 per 1,000) than they are for students (6.1 per 1,000). So you've got Congress looking to create an extra layer of enforcement for a population less at risk.
Gillibrand has amended CASA to win bipartisan support. Thus, the measure does not include one of the more extreme measures pushed by campus feminists and already written into California law for institutions of higher learning -- the affirmative consent standard, which requires sexual partners to consent affirmatively. Or, as University of California President Janet Napolitano explained at the hearing, "consent must be knowing, revocable and intentional." She added, "It really, in a way, shifts the burden so that the survivor isn't the one always trying to explain what happened."
"They're not trying to sugarcoat it at all," marveled Joseph Cohn of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. "They're being clear that they are shifting the burdens of proof. That's what the affirmative consent movement is all about." Civil libertarian beware: Affirmative consent and some academic tribunals have moved the burden of proof onto the accused -- not the accuser, where it has belonged.
As a woman, I believe that false accusations are rare, but they do happen. Last year's Rolling Stone story about an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia illustrates why no legislative body should undercut due process for the accused. Gillibrand's CASA would mandate that confidential advisers assist "survivors of sexual harassment"; it wouldn't really try to protect due process for the accused. That's where the Safe Campus Act, sponsored by Republican Reps. Matt Salmon of Arizona and Pete Sessions and Kay Granger of Texas, would provide needed protection. The measure would establish the right of the accused to counsel during disciplinary proceedings regarding sexual violence.
Jean Mrasek -- chairwoman of the National Panhellenic Conference, which represents 26 sororities -- told me her group is grateful that CASA has brought campus rape to the attention of the public. She expects Congress eventually to produce a bill with parts from both measures. The Salmon House bill would allow "for the experts to start" investigations, she noted, without preventing colleges and universities from being involved. "It's time to recognize that an act of sexual violence should be treated like the heinous crime that it is."
I'd rather see Congress leave campus rape to law enforcement, but that's not going to happen. So look to the Safe Campus Act for balance. It would establish a 30-day period during which law enforcement would have exclusive jurisdiction over a sexual assault case. Before an academic tribunal begins, accusers would have to go through the police -- which would boost the chances of timely gathering of evidence, including rape kits. As O'Neill noted, it's not enough to get rapists off campus; "we also want them incarcerated."
Way to trash your credibility, hon. The frequency of false rape accusations is a matter of fact, and it is the same regardless of your sex.
As a human being, I don't know whether false accusations are rare or frequent, but the way to form a judgment is to examine the evidence.
Silly me, I would have sworn that there are already laws against rape.
Was Bill Clinton ever prosecuted for the various rapes he committed?
Didn’t think so.
He might have been, if the victims had gone directly to the police, if physical evidence had been collected, and so on. It’s not guaranteed, but for sure there won’t be prosecution without a prompt report and evidence.
Careful there, you are treading very close to blasphemy there. After all, St. BillyJeff is pretty close to a god now.
How is this something about which there should be a FEDERAL law?
The country has gone insane.
Irrelevant.
Why are campuses municipalities?
I think we should call it the "Ted Kennedy Act".
Or perhaps the "William Kennedy Smith Act".
There’s nothing real about it either. It’s another feminazi fiction.
Sen. “Chubby” Gillibrand should STFU. If you don’t want to get raped, then don’t place yourself in situations where that might be a possibility.
The idea that there are no differences between the sexes is only operative until the feminazi’s say their isn’t. Which is only to their advantage, and only to the detriment of men. These to things are a requirement for them.
The real “rape culture” on campus is the idea that sex becomes rape at the moment of regret.
For most students, there is pretty much nothing academic either.
Bingo!
Hanson and her friend were handed beers; they joined a card game. Soon, Hanson says, despite having only the equivalent of two sipped drinks, she got dizzy — two beers felt like 10. “I had no control over my body,” she says. She lost her phone even though she isn’t the type of person to misplace things and especially not her phone. She blacked out.
As she collected her things — her clothing scattered around the room, tried to find her phone — she slowly began to realize what had happened. And, “it didn’t make sense.”
Hanson came to, naked and groggy in the bed of fellow student Wil Smith. “I understood he had sex with me,” she says of the night before. She remembers him pushing his fingers inside her, she remembers telling him, “Wait,” asking if he had a condom. Telling him that she didn’t want to. Telling him, “No.”
Over the next couple days, as she tried to understand that night with Smith, she says “The way I phrased it, ‘I had sex with someone I didn’t want to have sex with.’ It took me five days to call it rape.”
Sorry, post#17 was directed at you, not myself.
True, but we obviously need more and better laws. </s
See the paradox here? She insists that rape is a violent felony... no problem here... but then goes on to say that *colleges* should investigate them. Say what?
No, the *police* should investigate them. Real police, not campus “rent-a-cops”.
Nobody would legitimately suggest that colleges should investigate murders. If they even tried, there would be loud calls of a “coverup”; because what other possible reason could a college have for investigating a homicide?
It’s the same with rape.
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