Free Republic

“Any number of federal constitutional and statutory provisions reflect the proposition that, in this country, we determine guilt or innocence individually—rather than collectively, based on one’s identification with some demographic group,” wrote U.S. Appeals Court Judge Raymond Kethledge in a late June opinion. “That principle has not always been perfectly realized in our Nation’s history, but as judges it is one that we take an oath to enforce.” Kethledge’s words revived a lawsuit filed by an Oberlin College student who claimed that his school had unfairly found him guilty of sexual misconduct. Over a 100-day period this summer, four appeals...

... Once upon a time, long, long ago, those accused of rape or sexual harassment on campus were dealt with approximately as they would have been in any other non-university context. There would have been due process, the presumption of innocence, the right for the defense to confront the accuser, the right to an unbiased judge, the right for the defendant to hire a lawyer, and other such hoary traditions of justice. The underlying principle, then, was that it was better that 10 criminals go unpunished, than one innocent person be found guilty. But in 2011, a “Dear Colleague” Title...

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos fired a shot last month in the nation’s culture wars, overhauling how colleges handle investigations of sexual assault and ending what she called Obama-era “kangaroo courts” on campus. The new Education Department rules give more protections to the accused, primarily young men who face discipline or expulsion as a result of allegations of sexual misconduct. The move set off a liberal uproar, denounced by unions representing teachers and college professors, by the National Organization for Women and by an array of Democratic senators. The Trump rules, they said, constitute a radical rollback of protections for victims...

In the latest case where a male student sued his college over the unfair procedures it used to expel him, Colgate University in New York will go to trial. So ruled federal district judge Frederick Scullin on April 30. In his opinion, the plaintiff student had presented sufficient evidence of bias against him for the case to proceed. The case began in October 2016. At that time, Colgate, like all American colleges, was operating under the Title IX regulations instituted during the Obama administration. Those regulations, dictated through a mere “Dear Colleague” letter rather than formal administrative rulemaking, decreed that...

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...

Colleges and universities need rules defining unacceptable behavior and how students accused of infractions of those rules will be treated. Because determinations of guilt can have serious, long-lasting consequences, schools ought to ensure that their procedures are fair, approximating the due process of law accorded to defendants in our courts. Crucial to due process is the right of the accused to have the assistance of legal counsel. An attorney knows far better than the accused individual how to find and present evidence, how to detect holes in the case against the defendant, and when to object to unfair procedures. Unfortunately,...

For those awaiting a restoration of rational discourse in American politics, well, you’ll have to keep waiting. No other conclusion is possible after seeing the reaction to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s long-awaited regulatory proposals last week on handling accusations of sexual abuse on campus. From California Democrat Maxine Waters: “Betsy DeVos, you won’t get away with what you are doing. We are organizing to put an end to your destruction of civil rights protections for students.” Former Vice President Joe Biden said on Facebook that the proposal “would return us to the days when schools swept rape and assault under...

The Department of Education has issued its long-awaited proposed regulations reforming sexual-assault adjudications on college campus. Not only will these rules restore basic due process and fairness to college tribunals, but they also — given how basic the changes are — highlight just how ridiculous university kangaroo courts have become. First and perhaps most important, the rules will not only require colleges to permit cross-examination of witnesses (including the accuser), but will also prohibit universities from relying on the statements of any witness who refuses to submit to cross-examination. Cross-examination is so fundamental to adversary proceedings that it’s is simply...

The Trump administration on Friday scrapped Obama-era guidance on investigating campus sexual assault, replacing it with new instructions that allow universities to require higher standards of evidence when handling complaints. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has said that President Barack Obama’s policy had been unfairly skewed against those accused of assault and had “weaponized” the Education Department to “work against schools and against students.” The change is the latest in Trump’s broader effort to roll back Obama policies. Women’s rights groups slammed Friday’s decision, saying it will discourage students from reporting assault. The guidance released in 2011 and then updated in...

The way that leading figures on the political Left cling to disputed data is truly a marvel to behold. In an appearance on Monday, March 20, 2017, at the Center for American Progress (CAP), Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to former President Obama, repeated the one-in-five college rape statistic at least three times, even regretting that she didn't know about it before she sent her daughter off to college "in harm’s way." "The one-in-five figure is based on the Campus Sexual Assault Study, commissioned by the National Institute of Justice and conducted from 2005 to 2007," Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident...

Given that there are so many legitimate incidents to choose from, why have so many high-profile cases ultimately fallen apart? If you were to ask an average person today to name a prominent story about rape on college campuses, odds are pretty good that among the top four or five replies would be the Duke lacrosse case, the Rolling Stone cover story about Jackie and the University of Virginia, Columbia University "mattress girl" Emma Sulkowicz and one of the stories from "The Hunting Ground." Yet in all of these stories, either the accusations were later shown to be a complete...

Headlines citing a study finding one in three college men would rape a women if they could get away with it are splashed all over Feminist Internet — despite the fact that this stat is based on a survey of just 73 guys at the University of North Dakota. These headlines seem like a pretty big jump: “Study: 1 in 3 Men Would Rape if They Wouldn’t Get Caught or Face Consequences” (Cosmopolitan), “Study Finds That a Third of College Men Would Rape if They Could Get Away With It (Feministing), “1 in 3 Male University Students Would Sexually Assault...

There seems to be a full-court press on to get colleges to "do something" about rape on campus. But there seems to be remarkably little attention paid to two crucial facts: (1) rape is a crime and (2) colleges are not qualified to be law-enforcement institutions. Why are rapists not reported to the police and prosecuted in a court of law? Apparently this is because of some college women who say that they were raped and are dissatisfied with a legal system that does not automatically take their word for it against the word of someone who has been accused...