Minnesota’s failed football boycott was a blow to fairness in campus sexual assault hearings

Article here. Excerpt:

'The University of Minnesota football team’s recent failed boycott of their upcoming bowl game represents a terrible blow to those who care about due process on campus.

For a brief, shining moment, it seemed that finally, someone with a measure of power would be willing to stand up to what is often a deeply unfair sexual misconduct process on college campuses.

It was exciting to hear student athletes talking about due process. If the boycott had succeeded, it could have emboldened other students, whether bowl-bound athletes or people of similar stature, to consider standing up for their friends next time something like this happened.

Many schools advocated “bystander awareness” — basically the idea that when something bad is happening, good people should object to it and try to stop it. Being an active participant in what happens in the world around us is important; we all have an obligation to stop bad things when we can. That’s true whether the thing being stopped is a sexual assault or violation of someone’s rights by the government.

The problem with the Minnesota boycott isn’t really that the boycott failed. It’s that the Minnesota football players did not realize they’d picked the wrong case to stand up for.

There is a widely known phrase in the law that essentially defines this case: “Bad facts make bad law, and good facts make good law.” Having defended students at more than 50 colleges across the country and reviewed the extraordinarily detailed 80‑page investigative report prepared by the university’s Title IX office, the facts described there were uniquely horrifying.'

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If you read the police report, which relies on facts rather than the memory of the woman, you might come to the conclusion that this is exactly the right case. The police report is linked in this article. They found that she was a willing participant.

http://kstp.com/sports/university-of-minnesota-eoaa-investigative-report-gophers-football-players/4347059/

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