Sex assaults catch colleges in Title IX legal trap

Submitted by el cid on Sun, 2012-04-22 18:03

Story here. Excerpt:

"A closed- door encounter between two college acquaintances. Both have been drinking. One says she was raped; the other insists it was consensual. There are no other witnesses.

It's a common scenario in college sexual assault cases, and a potential nightmare to resolve. But under the 40-year-old federal gender equity law Title IX -- and guidance handed down last year by the Obama administration on how to apply it -- colleges can't just turn such cases over to criminal prosecutors, who often won't touch them anyway. Instead, they must investigate, and in campus proceedings do their best to balance the accused's due process rights with the civil right of the victim to a safe education.
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Colleges that do too little about sexual assault could lose federal funds. The Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights is currently investigating a dozen colleges and universities over their response to sexual violence (documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show schools that have recently agreed to take steps to resolve OCR complaints over Title IX policies include universities such as Notre Dame, Northwestern and George Washington).

Meanwhile, judgments in Title IX lawsuits against colleges, usually brought by accusers, are soaring. Compounding the fear: In some such cases, college administrators may be found personally liable.

But when colleges do take action against accused students, those students are increasingly lawyering up themselves, suing for breach of contract and negligence. And in at least two recent cases, in Tennessee and Massachusetts, male students have tread novel legal ground by alleging violations of their own Title IX protections against gender discrimination, arguing a college's sexual assault policies or procedures were unfairly stacked against men.'

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Here's the paragraph that made my blood boil:

"Wendy Murphy, a Boston attorney and victims' advocate who has filed numerous Title IX complaints on behalf of victims, says colleges cave too easily to the threat of lawsuits from students accused of sexual violence. Most victims don't have the resources to pursue lawsuits, which is precisely why they depend on campus Title IX procedures to ensure they are protected. That requires putting a thumb on the scale in favor of victims -- such as the "preponderance of the evidence" standard the Obama administration has said schools must use in adjudicating such cases."

In essence, the only way we can protect women is by being unfair to men. I would argue that's the foundation of feminist jurisprudence: tipping the scales of justice to favor women. Apparently, the Obama administration believes this to be the case.

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Submitted by el cid on Tue, 2012-04-24 01:12

'Colleges must protect victims, she says. That means abandoning the fantasy they can make everybody happy by also offering accused students the full due process rights they'd enjoy in a criminal trial.

"You can't run a school that way," Murphy said. "If every once in a while a school has to be sued at the cost of being fair to all students, so be it."'

LOL! What a logical trainwreck that statement is, considering what she just said before! Denying someone due process is "fair"? And this is coming from an attorney, no less.

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Submitted by xtrnl on Wed, 2012-04-25 20:14