FIRE Press Release: Bipartisan Support for Student Rights in Senate VAWA Reauthorization

Article here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON, April 30, 2012—The U.S. Senate made bipartisan progress on college student rights on Friday as it passed the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2011 (VAWA). Heeding the concerns of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), Senators altered language in the final bill that might have required colleges and universities to employ our nation's weakest standard of proof in adjudicating allegations of sexual misconduct.

"FIRE thanks Senators Patrick Leahy, Chuck Grassley, Robert Casey, Mike Crapo, and Kay Bailey Hutchison for their leadership in protecting students' due process rights," said FIRE President Greg Lukianoff. "Campus sexual misconduct can and should be combated without eroding student due process rights."
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FIRE continues to be concerned about the Senate bill's requirement that colleges maintain "procedures for the accused and the victim to appeal the results of the institutional disciplinary proceeding." (Emphasis added.) The requirement contradicts the principle behind the Fifth Amendment's prohibition on "double jeopardy," whereby someone accused of a crime cannot be tried again for the same charge once the original hearing has properly ended in either acquittal or conviction. (The alternative version proposed by Senator Grassley and Senator Hutchison addressed this concern.)'