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'Due process for college students has been in the news lately, as judge after judge makes favorable rulings for students accused of sexual assault.
Naturally, those outraged over the supposed epidemic of campus sexual assault claim that due process is an impediment to justice. An accusation is as good as guilt, some activists seemingly believe.
But accused students who feel they have been wrongly vilified are fighting back, by suing the universities that expelled them and treated them as guilty from the start. They're claiming a lack of due process protections.
For instance, most colleges and universities don't allow the accused or accuser to have legal representation (some schools allow a lawyer to sit in but not speak), many schools don't even provide students with an explanation of the charges against them, or allow the accused to cross-examine his accuser. No testimony in campus courts is given under oath, yet the transcripts and evidence can be turned over to police afterward.'
'Having law enforcement involved in adjudicating campus assault claims is a key part of federal legislation that gained momentum this week with noteworthy endorsements.
The National Association of Scholars and the National District Attorneys Association have both come out in favor of the Safe Campus Act of 2015, which aims to protect the due process rights of students accused of assault or rape.
The bill comes after dozens of male students in recent years have sued their universities, alleging they were essentially railroaded by campus officials after unsubstantiated and biased sexual assault claims were lodged against them.'
'The foreskin: a highly debated part of the male anatomy that some say is an unnecessary health risk, while others consider it a vital part of the reproductive system. Most Americans choose to have their children circumcised at infancy, forsaking the foreskin to prevent a slew of health problems that some medical professionals warn about. But in recent years, many are finding the benefits of keeping your crusader caped.
'Campus sexual assault has recently become the focus of extensive national attention and debate. Up until now, efforts by the government to combat this horrific crime have focused on campus disciplinary committees. Yet most Americans disagree with this approach and instead believe that campus sexual assault is a matter best handled by the criminal justice system—and for good reason. In cases where the accused student is guilty, the most these committees can do in expel someone who really belongs behind bars.
And in cases where the accused student is innocent, critical due process protections guaranteed by the Constitution are missing, running the risk of wrongful expulsion. Indeed, numerous lawsuits have been filed against schools over the last few years by students claiming to have been wrongfully expelled for an offense they did not commit.'
'But three times was too many, in this town of 13,000, which boasts of being home to the “first concrete street in America.”
Under questioning by police, Brittany Pilkington broke down and confessed to suffocating all three of her sons by putting blankets over their heads, according to the Columbus Dispatch and the AP.
The reason for the alleged murder spree?
She wanted her husband to pay more attention to their daughter, a prosecutor said.
“In her mind, she was protecting her daughter from being not as loved as the boys were by their father,” Logan County prosecutor William Goslee told the Columbus Dispatch.
Brittany Pilkington was charged with three counts of murder and jailed on Tuesday, according to the AP. Her remaining child, Hailey, was taken into custody by a Logan County welfare agency.'
'As parents prepare to fork over $20,000 to $60,000 for college tuition, they might benefit from knowing what greets their youngsters. Deceitful college officials, who visit high schools to recruit students and talk to parents, conceal the worst of their campus practices. Let's expose some of it.
Christina Hoff Sommers is an avowed feminist and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. She's spent a lifetime visiting college campuses. Recently, upon her arrival at Oberlin College, Georgetown University and other campuses, trigger warnings were issued asserting, in her words, that her “very presence on campus” was “a form of violence” and that she was threatening students' mental health.
At Oberlin, 30 students and the campus therapy dog retired to a “safe room” with soft music, crayons and coloring books to escape any uncomfortable facts raised by Sommers.
'A few years ago, Lauren Southern held up a sign saying "I don't need feminism because I believe in equality".
The image went viral and soon she was getting a lot of attention for the bold statement – some nice and some not so.
"I got a lot of support, but I also got a lot of hate and criticism," she said.
"Mostly from feminists who said I did not know what feminism means, but feminism is actually a movement for equality."
"So today I wanted to speak to those feminists and explain why I'm still not a feminist and why third wave feminism is NOT actually a movement for equality," she added.'
'Male students can suffer from gender discrimination too, a federal judge ruled in letting a Title IX lawsuit proceed against Northwestern University.
The Daily Northwestern reports that the unnamed medical student is accusing the school of “deliberate indifference” and retaliation against him when he filed a complaint against a microbiology and pathology professor:
"The professor began sexually harassing the student within three months of his July 2007 enrollment in the program, according to the suit. The professor allegedly started “making suggestive comments” about the student’s physical appearance and “ogling” him. At a 2010 off-campus retreat, the professor allegedly invited the student back to his room so he could cut his hair. The suit also claims that the professor asked the student’s peers about the student’s sexual orientation."'
'The National Association of Scholars (NAS) endorsed the Safe Campus Act, which ensures that campus sexual assault allegations be judged by law enforcement agencies.
When a college student reports being a victim of sexual assault, the college often begins its own inquiry leading to disciplinary procedures. Under the Safe Campus Act, the college may take these steps only if the alleged victim consents to an investigation by law enforcement.
Provisions of the Act are outlined in a diagram at the website of the organization Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE).
The Safe Campus Act, H.R. 3403 (full text here), is an amendment to the Higher Education Act of 1965 currently before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
'For the last four years, a little-known civil rights office in the U.S. Department of Education has forced far-reaching changes in how the nation’s colleges and universities police, prosecute and punish sexual assaults on campus.
With a strong mandate from President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, the office's lawyers have redefined campus sexual assault as a federal civil rights issue, changed the standard by which allegations must be judged and publicized the names of a growing number of schools under investigation for allegedly failing to respond properly to complaints of sexual misconduct.
...
"Some schools see OCR as a bully with enforcement powers," said Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president at the American Council on Education, the lobby group for higher education.
"Universities are desperately trying to do the right thing, but these cases can be really difficult to resolve fairly. Often, you have two conflicting stories, no evidence, no witnesses, and it’s all combined with substance abuse."
'Kgosi Tumelo Puleng of Letlhakeng says time is nigh for men to shed their bad boy image of associating with undesirable practices in society and to learn to be more responsible.
Giving welcome remarks at the Kweneng West MenCare graduation ceremony in Letlhakeng on Saturday August 15, Kgosi Puleng said for a long time, men had been associated with societal ills such as abuse, rape, incest as well as drug abuse.
“This is even evidenced by the fact that men’s prisons are always filled to capacity as compared to women’s prisons,” he said. He said men were also known to be slow on issues of sexual reproductive health as well as advocacy for gender equality.
“Such concerns as the reluctance to test for HIV and AIDS as well as unwillingness to participate in initiatives meant to address societal ills like abuse gives the impression that they are the perpetrators. So it is up to men to stand up and clear their image by meaningfully participating in these initiatives,” he said.
'Bryce Dixon, a football player who was expelled from the University of Southern California for sexual assault, should resume classes and might be able to rejoin the team, a judge has ruled.
On Wednesday, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert H. O’Brien barred USC from carrying out the expulsion on the grounds that the university’s sexual assault adjudication process was miserably unfair to accused students.
Bryce’s attorney, Mark Hathaway, released the following statement:
“Judge O’Brien agreed with Bryce that USC’s Title IX sexual misconduct investigation was unfair and lacks due process.” said Mark Hathaway, attorney for Bryce Dixon. “USC’s investigator acts as police, prosecutor, and judge. There is no hearing, no right to counsel, no rules of evidence, no presumption of innocence, and no right to confront witnesses. Courts are beginning to recognize the injustice imposed on students.”'
'Considering campus sexual assault disciplinary issues, courts and legislators are beginning to emphasize due process requirements, including fairness protections for those accused that conceivably contradict protections aimed at preventing sexual violence. In addition to pending federal legislation on campus sexual misconduct, including sexual assault, 29 states have introduced or passed their own bills on the topic; virtually all of this legislation includes some nod to fairness as well as prevention provisions, such as the “yes means yes” laws passed in California and New York. Balancing those due process and complainant protections requires careful navigation of legal requirements.
Three recent cases emphasize potential challenges, with favorable outcomes for student-respondents in California, Tennessee and Virginia.'
'This case arises amidst a growing national controversy about the responses of colleges and universities to alleged sexual violence on college and university campuses.
'This afternoon multiple bomb threats were called in to a Society of Professional Journalists debate about GamerGate. I’ve been passed the remarks my fellow panellist, AEI scholar and feminist academic Christina Hoff Sommers, was planning to make.
A video game journalist from Vancouver recently took to Twitter to draw attention to a Tweet sent by a gamer: The gamer had tweeted: “I fucking swear—they get rid of Huge Boobs, I’m gone.” For this journalist those 11 words captured the essence of the gamer crusade. The hypermasculine dudebro attitude–— the crude objectification of women. It’s all there. Or so it seemed to him. As he put it: “#Gamergate summarized in one impossibly perfect tweet.”
But as is often the case with media accounts of GamerGate– the facts don’t really fit the narrative. First of all, the author was not talking about video games, but rather efforts to censor images of buxom ladies on Reddit. But more importantly—the author of the tweet is a young woman named Alison. Alison is a lesbian gamer who apparently enjoys gazing at images of busty women. For me, it is the game journalist’s tweet, not Allison’s, that is emblematic. It is an impossibly perfect illustration of a serious flaw in contemporary journalism: the narrative matters more than truth. The Rolling Stone’s apocryphal story about a gang rape at UVA is frequently cited as the classic example of narrative over-reach. But the press literature on GamerGate is strikingly similar.
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