Article here. Excerpt:

'Campus Sexual Assault Defense

If you are a student who has been accused of sexually assaulting another student, please get help quickly.

Too often students who are accused of serious misconduct in a student disciplinary proceeding keep silent, assuming that if they just tell their version of what happened, everything will work out fine.

This is a mistake.

I have represented students in school disciplinary proceedings who have been accused of sexual assault. It is impressive how many resources a university can bring to investigate and discipline its own students.
...
The school's interest is not in being fair. The school is not trying to make sure that the truth comes out. Rather, the school is trying to make sure it protects itself.

Article here. Excerpt:

'On April 4, 2011 the Department of Education issued its disastrous “Dear Colleague” letter to colleges and universities across the United States, requiring administrators who had neither the investigative nor prosecutorial prowess of the criminal justice system to determine the guilt and innocence of students accused of felony sexual assault, and to reach their conclusions independent of whatever the police and courts decide.

Worse – the Department of Education demanded these schools determine guilt via a radically low standard of evidence for sex-assault cases: the “preponderance of evidence” standard. Under this model if an administrator feels that there might be a 50.01% chance that the alleged crime occurred, he/she must find the student guilty (“responsible”) for sexual assault. This is further complicated by the lack of numerous other procedural safeguards and methods of evidentiary examination.

Predictably, a wave of lawsuits soon erupted as young men wrongly accused of sex crimes found themselves hustled through a vague and misshapen adjudication process with slipshod checks and balances and Kafkaesque standards of evidence. This page is dedicated to cataloging their legal challenges against schools which – they allege – have violated their rights to due process, unjustly destroyed their names, deprived them of educational opportunities, and committed various other injustices against them in the name of “just following orders.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'Lawmakers in Washington, DC have proposed the idea of having a ‘scarlet letter’ that would permanently mark the transcripts of students who are investigated by campus authorities for sexual misconduct. If they are introduced, these markers would ‘follow [the accused] to new schools [and] into the workforce’.

Considering the Kafkaesque nature of campus sexual-assault proceedings, which infamously lack even the most basic elements of due process, and the vague (not to mention unromantic) definitions of consent that are often used in them, one would think requiring men who are convicted in these tribunals to be branded for life was a recipe for injustice. But that’s not even the worst part.

Article here. Excerpt:

'An Iowa appeals court has dismissed an appeal from Iowa State University that would have overturned an earlier ruling regarding a campus sexual assault accusation.

In May 2012, Yempabou "Bubu" Palo, an ISU basketball player, was accused of sexually assaulting a fellow student. Palo and another man, Spencer Cruise, had been friends with the accuser — listed in court records as H.B. — since high school. Palo and H.B. had engaged in sexual activities years earlier.

H.B. accused both men of raping her, and Palo was criminally charged with second-degree sexual abuse. But after an investigation — which included the discovery of fabricated evidence — the charges were dropped. H.B. had claimed that the blouse she had worn the night of the alleged attack had been torn during the encounter but that she had lost it. About seven months after the alleged incident, she found the torn blouse, but said she had washed it a week after the event.

Article here. Excerpt:

'A new state law and a $1.7 million study aim to make the University of Texas a safer place for students when it comes to sexual assault

The new state law mandates all Texas schools inform students of their sexual assault policy and go over it with them every two years

"It's a long time, it is four years," said UT grad student, Omar Awapara. "It is good to have more than one reminder of that."

University of Texas System is also spending $1.7 million to study sexual assault, harassment and dating violence over the next four years. The study will include things like student surveys and focus groups. They'll also track a select group of students through their four years on campus. University officials say this will be the most in-depth study ever conducted at a college campus.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Last week, the Guardian published a report on sexual abuse on UK university campuses. It detailed a number of stories involving young women telling university staff members that they had been sexually assaulted, and the staff’s allegedly poor response. The staff were accused of ‘victim blaming’ and minimising the students’ complaints. The Guardian suggests that a standardised, country-wide set of guidelines be established for universities when dealing with allegations of sexual assault.

Article here. Excerpt:

'An opponent of a new bill aimed at providing due process rights to students accused of sexual assault disparaged the thought of such constitutional rights because schools "must prioritize the needs of survivors first and foremost."

That's all well and good, but one does not know whether someone is truly a "survivor" unless his or her story can hold up to scrutiny, something deliberately absent from current campus hearings. But that doesn't seem to matter to Sarah Merriman, a spokeswoman for SAFER Campus, who told the Washington Post why she opposes the "Safe Campus Act."

Article here. Excerpt:

'A small contingent of women (probably today’s feminists) take the same position as other “minorities” that there is a large majority keeping them down. They are playing on political correctness to accomplish certain goals they define improperly as those of women in general. But the concept is false on two levels.

First, it defines women as a class, a mass, a collective. Women are individuals, just as men are. Each woman has a mind, heart, lungs, brain, the capacity to learn, act, and achieve, and the ability to choose her own goals. And, by the way, the 2010 census tells us that women are a majority, not a minority. They comprise 50.8% of the U.S. population.

Second, it defines women’s goals as universal. They aren’t. Because each woman can define herself as well as decide what to do with her life’s energies. Many women become lawyers, doctors, politicians, business owners, technicians, cab drivers, school teachers, IT specialists… (As the King of Siam says in The King and I, “et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.”) Lo and behold, some women even choose to be housewives, mothers, homemakers, and matriarchs.

Yes, women have not always received proper treatment in society at large. According to the great historical author Barbara Tuchman, many women in the Middle Ages chose the convent over a marriage in which they would be dominated, often cruelly, by a husband who thought they were chattel. Up until the early 20th century, women did not have the vote. There was a glass ceiling forty or fifty years ago. My wife once told her father she wanted to be an architect. He discouraged her. It was unlikely, he explained, that a woman could be accepted in that profession.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Gillibrand reinforced traditional gender roles by consistently referring to rape accusers as “she,” and even made an uncredited reference to Columbia rape accuser, activist and porn star Emma Sulkowicz, whom Gillibrand invited to the State of the Union address in January.
...
While AAU supports the “goal” of CASA, it doesn’t want the confidential adviser to have any investigative or reporting role and it sees “potential conflict” with Title IX reporting requirements, Flounlacker said. Collins, who chaired most of the hearing in Alexander’s absence, agreed that “we’re putting schools between a rock and a hard place” on the adviser’s role in CASA.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The senate hearings are based around faulty statistics, like the frequently debunked “one in five women on campus are sexually assaulted” myth, and overhyped false accusations like the fabricated UVa rape case. In the Caleb Warner case at the University of North Dakota, the Duke Lacrosse case, and more all over the nation, false accusations bring life-altering consequences to the accused. In the Warner case, the University even upheld his expulsion after police brought charges of filing a false report against the accuser.

In this environment of fraudulent anecdotes and phony statistics, the senate on Wednesday opened discussion on a bill ostensibly designed to curb campus sexual assault, but which is notably devoid of due process rights for the accused. In fact, the bill refers to accusers as “victims,” despite ample evidence that they are often victimizers.

Article here. Excerpt:

'While flipping through the WestJet TV lineup on a recent cross-country flight, I reluctantly settled for a popular daytime talk-show (my other options included Days of Our Lives and re-runs of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo), which saw a panel of 4 diversely opinionated women duking it out to see who could make their co-host seem like the bigger idiot. Sigh.

Interestingly, however, the subject they were debating that day happened to be male circumcision, a surprising topic for daytime TV.

Two of the female hosts in particular were taking the stage with polarizing views on the matter. One host saw the medical procedure as a hygienic practice that lowered the risk of disease while the other saw it as an archaic and highly irrelevant surgery.

In the end, the audience was left undecided. I, however, was left with an ignited curiosity about a medical procedure that I had never really taken time to question.

Story here. Excerpt:

'SCOTTISH Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie has been urged to introduce women-only shortlists for parliamentary candidates after his only female MSP was ousted from the top of one of his party’s regional lists by a male rival.

The move will mean Alison McInnes, the current LibDem MSP for North East Scotland, is unlikely to be re-elected to Holyrood and her seat could be taken by the former MSP Mike Rumbles, who secured top ranking.

McInnes is currently the only female LibDem parliamentarian in Holyrood and Westminster.

Apart from her, the party has four male MSPs and eight male MPs, including Alistair Carmichael. Its only MEP is a woman – Catherine Bearder.

Only one of the party’s eight regional lists for next year’s

Scottish Parliament elections is headed by a woman.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Three members of a University of Virginia fraternity caught up in a firestorm of criticism over a since-retracted Rolling Stone article alleging a sexual assault have filed a lawsuit against the publication and its author.

The three UVA graduates say in the complaint filed in federal court Wednesday that they were humiliated and mocked after they were presumed to be participants in an alleged sexual assault that was the centerpiece of the story.

They were not identified by the since-discredited article, but information in the story led to them being identified online as participants in the alleged attack, the lawsuit claims.

The three men suffered "vicious and hurtful attacks" in the aftermath of the article, the lawsuit says. Online, "plaintiffs' names will forever be associated with the alleged gang rape," the lawsuit claims.'

Also see this story.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Senate’s Campus Accountability and Safety Act (CASA), which concerns itself mostly with students who allege they were sexually assaulted, has new competition from the House – a bill that would give greater protections to accused students in campus disciplinary proceedings.

In other words, it would completely reverse how schools increasingly run their rape investigations.

The Safe Campus Act was introduced by three Republicans – Reps. Matt Salmon of Arizona and Pete Sessions and Kay Granger of Texas.
...
The bill would also preclude punitive interim measures if an accuser doesn’t report the accusation to law enforcement, and allow both parties to hire lawyers “to represent them throughout the process,” as FIRE notes. Crucially, it would allow those attorneys to “ask questions in the proceeding, file relevant papers, examine evidence, and examine witnesses.”
...
The bill also prevents officials from playing “multiples roles” in the process, such as a “victim counselor” also serving as an investigator; give all parties access to “material evidence” at least a week before a proceeding starts; and importantly, repeal the authority of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to order colleges which evidence standard to use (currently the “more-likely-than-not” preponderance standard).

Only North Carolina and North Dakota have statewide protections for accused students along the lines of House bill.

A spokeswoman for SAFER Campus, an advocacy group, told The Washington Post that accused students should essentially have no rights until the campus disciplinary system works perfectly for accusers:

Article here. Excerpt:

'A trio of House Republicans have introduced a new bill that seeks to guarantee due process when college students are accused of sexual assault, while also increasing the involvement of law enforcement in such cases.

The Safe Campus Act's three sponsors are Reps. Matt Salmon of Arizona along with Pete Sessions and Kay Granger, both of Texas. All three are Republicans. The bill’s release coincides with renewed interest in the U.S. Senate over another bill intended to help prevent campus assaults. (RELATED: Senate Plans One-Sided Sexual Assault Panel)