Presumed Guilty at Princeton

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'Princeton University looks set to become the latest campus to curtail the due-process rights of students accused of sexual misconduct, including rape and other violent assaults.

On Monday the faculty voted to approve new disciplinary policies under which allegations of sexual offenses—but only sexual offenses—would no longer require "clear and persuasive evidence" to be considered proven. "Preponderance of the evidence," the standard used in civil lawsuits, would suffice. The new policy now goes to the Council of the Princeton University Community, which is expected to approve it Sept. 29.
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Universities are ill-equipped to investigate and adjudicate allegations of violent crime; that is why we have police, prosecutors, judges and juries. The pressure on universities to conduct such investigations, and to jettison due process, emanates from Washington, where the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights has imposed onerous demands on educational institutions in the name of combating sex discrimination.

Schools that refuse to adopt the preponderance-of-evidence standard, among other requirements, are threatened with the denial of federal funds, including student financial aid. Princeton has been under OCR investigation since 2010 for alleged lenience toward sex-offense defendants.

Members of the Princeton Council may feel they have no choice but to rubber-stamp this proposal. On the other hand, the university has an $18 billion endowment, one of the biggest in the country. Perhaps it could afford to risk some federal funding in the interest of preserving the rights of Princeton students.'