‘Long overdue’: Colleges needed lower standard of evidence in sexual assault cases, an advocate says

Article here. Excerpt:

'When Vice President Biden and U.S. Department of Education officials announced in 2011 landmark Title IX guidance dealing with how colleges and universities handle sexual assault, I had the incredible honor of being a guest along with my colleague Laura Dunn as we both provided input on the Dear Colleague letter. The vice president’s call to action got the attention of higher education focused on this issue like it had never been before, something that was long overdue and resonates to this day.
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The Education Department, for example, had applied a “preponderance of the evidence,” commonly referred to as “50 percent plus one,” standard in Title IX cases dating back at least as early as 1991.

Schools, however, had only been notified on a case-by-case basis about this expectation.

Upholding this standard is proper, because unlike criminal proceedings, colleges and universities are not determining whether someone can be imprisoned, but whether they violated school policies.

For most institutions this was not a radical departure from their normal procedures.

Russlynn Ali, head of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights who signed the 2011 letter, estimated at the time that “about 80 percent of colleges were already using the preponderance standard.”'