DeVos will restore due process on campus assault

Article here. Excerpt:

'The contentious confirmation hearing of Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s nominee for Education secretary, revealed just how difficult it will be to restore a degree of fairness in how the nation’s colleges and universities handle sexual assault allegations.

Even before the hearing commenced, Democratic senators Patty Murray of Washington and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania issued a letter wildly describing campus sexual assault as “affecting millions of college students.” (According the most recent federal Clery Act data, from 2014, there were 5,178 rape reports on campus that year.) The senators demanded the new administration retain guilt-presuming policies adopted in April 2011 by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR).

OCR has forced thousands of universities to change their procedures in sex cases, in each case increasing the chances of a guilty finding. These procedures include the lowest possible burden of proof (a 50.01% probability) ; a virtual ban on meaningful cross-examination, long seen by the Supreme Court as the law’s best truth-finding tool; letting accusers appeal not guilty findings, a form of double jeopardy; a process so rushed that many accused students lack time to prepare a defense; and “interim” punishments before any investigation.'