Campus Sexual Assault Kangaroo Courts Are Impeding Education
The campus kangaroo courts, where some sophomore worrying about her poli sci final is deciding whether a guy accused of rape looks guilty, were ordered by the Obama administration under Title IX (tied to college funding).
They are horribly unfair -- removing due process from men -- and pulling onto campus a process that belongs in the criminal justice system.
Ashe Schow writes at Wash Ex that a bipartisan group is calling for for reform:
Department of Education regulations forcing colleges and universities to create pseudo-court systems to handle campus sexual assault are interfering with schools' core mission to educate, according to a bipartisan report from a task force for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.The report was designed to offer solutions for easing regulatory burdens on colleges, which have exploded in recent years.
"Over time, oversight of higher education by the Department of Education has expanded and evolved in ways that undermine the ability of colleges and universities to serve students and accomplish their missions," the report said. "The compliance problem is exacerbated by the sheer volume of mandates -- approximately 2,000 pages of text -- and the reality that the Department of Education issues official guidance to amend or clarify its rules at a rate of more than one document per work day."
Bureaucracy as an undermining force? What a surprise.
It's important to keep in mind the "power and money!" underpinnings of this -- all the people who have unnecessary jobs and power over a lot of other people. It is in their vested interest to continue to maintain the kangaroo courts and continue to increase the complexity of "must dos" for colleges.
And in turn, the overpaid and bloated colled administrations these days also look more necessary. Win-win -- for everyone but the student body and all the male students accused of sex crimes who get expelled after their due process rights are removed from them and they are judged guilty on standards of evidence that would never be acceptable in an actual court.
RELATED: Harvey Silverglate writes in the Boston Globe that the sexual assault panic on campuses is another in a series of panics, including the Red Scare and the (false) accusations of child molestation at day care centers in the 1980s:
The latest national hysteria over campus sexual assault combines aspects of its predecessors: the salacious outrage that characterized the daycare sex panic and the dubious federal stamp of approval that made McCarthyism's excesses so dangerous. Spectacular -- but widely disputed -- statistics are touted: 1 in 5 women is sexually assaulted in college, 1 in 3 male students is a potential rapist. The rhetoric popularized by mattress protests and awareness documentaries is a simple one: "Believe the accuser!"The idea that college campuses are among the most dangerous places for young American women has become so pervasive that when Rolling Stone published one woman's outlandish account of a brutal gang rape in a University of Virginia fraternity house (a story later proven to be inaccurate on the basis of investigative reporting by The Washington Post), readers swallowed the tale unquestioningly. Finally, the campus disciplinary boards -- woefully lacking in even basic standards of due process -- are vowing to adjudicate these ostensibly violent felonies and reflexively punishing virtually all who are accused.
Acquaintance or "date rape" is a serious and historically under-enforced offense in the criminal justice system. Sexual violence against women -- against anyone -- cannot be tolerated. But it's also true that college campuses are hotbeds of alcohol abuse and sexual activity among young adults often inexperienced with both. Alcohol-fueled and often ambiguous sexual encounters may result in emotional injury. But if the problem is young people's inability to recognize and respect boundaries, the solution is not to punish a wide range of campus behaviors that would be legally acceptable in the "real world."
What's more, the definition of "sexual assault" has become so broad as to encompass nearly all romantic contact. A sexual advance is considered "unwelcome" on subjective, rather than objective, grounds. In other words, if a complainant feels she was violated, then she was. This rationale is the basis for "affirmative consent" (colloquially known as "yes means yes") laws, which several states have imposed upon their campuses. Ezra Klein, editor-in-chief of Vox.com and a supporter of California's "yes means yes" law, admits the law overreaches and that under affirmative consent, "too much counts as sexual assault." Even so, Klein believes that the innocent men (and occasionally women) who will be thrown out of school are necessary sacrifices to the greater cause of combatting sexual assault on campus. Rhetoric and ideology have overtaken rationality and fairness.
Losers are the students, but also the faculty that wants to get on with teaching. Look at the abuse of adjunct lecturers that is taking place: In many colleges, the majority of undergraduate courses are taught by contract lecturers working for peanuts, because they can't afford to actually hire faculty to do the teaching.
- Get rid of *all* federal regulations - the feds have no business regulating colleges - and you can fire most of the administration.
- Fire most of the administration, and you can actually hire people - create real faculty positions - to teach the students. Not to mention dropping tuition back to a reasonable level.
- Have real faculty positions instead of adjunct lecturers, and they will be able to invest more time in preparing and giving their courses.
Which might just return colleges to the idea of serving their students, instead of their federal overlords.
Of course, the "university diversity officers", the "vice presidents for equity and inclusion", and other deadwood will all be out of jobs. Maybe they can go flip hamburgers; at least that way, they would actually be producing something useful.
a_random_guy at February 21, 2015 6:31 AM
There's a REASON traditional schools are fighting distance learning, online courses, and MOOCs tooth and nail: You need far less administrators to run them, far fewer facilities, and thus, far fewer sinecure jobs. . . .
And yet they've hassled my daughters for carrying a taser prod and a collapseable baton. And Ghod forbid they use their CCW permits: it's a gun-free zone !
Keith Glass at February 21, 2015 7:12 AM
This seems to be implying that 18-21 year olds lack adult judgment. Use to be that legal majority was 21. Even now, you have to be 21 to consume alcohol and to purchase a handgun. Perhaps we need to increase the age of majority to 21.
My mother has told me stories of how colleges kept a tight rein on their under 21 female students. Evidently we need to return to the "good old days."
Bill O Rights at February 21, 2015 7:55 AM
Unbelievably, there's an argument that students just can't handle too much on their own. I'm sure who or what these these "educators" think they're teaching but this is just a truely sad state we're in. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/398505/professor-argues-college-students-are-helpless-and-need-dictator-teachers-katherine
Guest at February 21, 2015 9:02 AM
Perhaps we need to increase the age of majority to 21.
No. When we can charge 12 year olds as adults for murder, 16 year olds as adults for raping their 17 yr old girlfriend, and consider 26 year olds children under the ACA for insurance purposes what does it matter what the "official" age of majority is
lujlp at February 21, 2015 9:40 AM
What has been the liberal/millenial response to Eric Posner?
Have the youngest adults on the block shouted him down agreeing with him the are still children?
Related: the college I went to had drugs and alcohol, but it was basically keep it out of sight. It was never defended as a right of 18 year olds to get/remain shitfaced beyond all repair as it treated now by:
1) Students
2) College Administrators
3) Media and pundits both liberal, conservative and libertarian
The first step colleges take to crackdown on their sex problems is to diminish rights, kick kids out of college, heighten the divisions. But they all say just how freakin impossible, unrealistic, and downright unacceptable it would be to crack down on the alcohol problems among their underage population.
jerry at February 21, 2015 12:10 PM
Most MOOC's are not very good. Dr. Barbara Oakley's on Coursera, on Learning How To Learn, is, I think, their most successful ever, and that's because she didn't just stand in front of a white screen and pontificate.
https://www.coursera.org/learn/learninghowtolear
Amy Alkon at February 21, 2015 12:29 PM
"Even now, you have to be 21 to consume alcohol and to purchase a handgun."
Actually, the law says "possess", not purchase, that pistol.
Your daughter can machine-gun countless people when, and only when, she is in UNIFORM, but under no circumstances can she be trusted to protect herself without wearing it.
Radwaste at February 22, 2015 10:16 AM
Hey, maybe we could get serious about crime in high schools by demanding that a committee be formed of the homecoming king and queen, the student body president and vice president, the principal, and the football coach to investigate and punish crime in high schools.
Dwatney at February 22, 2015 11:24 AM
"And yet they've hassled my daughters for carrying a taser prod and a collapseable baton."
It's a little odd they wouldn't be allowed to carry their dominatrix tools on campus.
Maybe the school doesn't want them walloping clients between classes?
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at February 22, 2015 12:00 PM
"It was never defended as a right of 18 year olds to get/remain shitfaced beyond all repair..."
The ironic thing is, my undergrad years were during that window in the early '80s when the drinking age was in fact 18. And I don't recall seeing that many problems. Yes, at many parties there was some guy (and it was nearly always a guy) who drank until he puked. But it was regarded as rather pathetic. And there were a few alcoholics, but they tended not to last long. There were drunken hookups sometimes, but most girls on campus wore their big-girl panties regarding that sort of thing. (And of the few that didn't, word got around the student body very quickly; most guys knew who to avoid, and if they didn't, the other women would warn them.) I don't recall ever seeing anyone who just totally passed out from drinking. Drugs were sometimes another matter (it was amazing the variety of drugs that were available on campus), but back then, if you used illegal drugs and then went off and complained about what someone did to you while you were stoned, you'd just be laughed at.
If there were to be just one single federal regulation applied to colleges, I'd like it to be this: There can be no more than one non-teaching salaried employee for every ten teaching faculty, period, no exceptions.
Cousin Dave at February 23, 2015 7:49 AM
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