California ‘Affirmative Consent’ Bill Puts Colleges in Untenable Position

Article here. Excerpt:

'Colleges are in an increasingly untenable position when it comes to the sexual autonomy of their students, and the house of cards is going to come crashing down sooner or later.

Last week, the California State Senate approved SB 967, a bill that would require colleges receiving state-funded student aid to use an “affirmative consent” standard in their sexual assault policies. According to a report by the Associated Press:

"Their policies must include an affirmative consent standard, which is defined as “an affirmative, unambiguous and conscious decision” by each party to engage in sexual activity. It also requires consent to be ongoing throughout a sexual activity."

So on the one hand, colleges and universities are being asked to closely monitor how students conduct their sex lives, sometimes to the point of ensuring not only that consent was present, but also that it was “affirmative and unambiguous” throughout the entire encounter. As the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times pointed out, “It seems extremely difficult and extraordinarily intrusive to micromanage sex so closely as to tell young people what steps they must take in the privacy of their own dorm rooms.”
...
There is no question that colleges and universities have made a hash of handling claims of student sexual misconduct in ways that harm both the accused and the alleged victims. But requiring colleges to get more involved in micromanaging students’ sex lives by requiring them to assess not only the presence but also the quality of consent to a sexual encounter, and then to adjudicate those claims under the lowest evidentiary standard, is not the way to remedy this problem.'