Federal Government Requires Peering Through Students’ Bedroom Windows

Article here. Excerpt:

'Just when did sexual conduct, not involving the crossing of state lines, become a concern of the federal government?

And what business do colleges have in passing judgment on whether adult students have observed proper sexual etiquette?

A petition for writ of mandate filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on June 29 prompts these questions—though these aren’t issues in the case. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge James Chalfant will be asked to decide whether Occidental College breached the “fundamental vested rights” of a 20-year-old male student who performed oral sex on a 20-year-old female student, not ceasing in response to an ambiguous utterance on her part that arguably constituted a directive to stop—and was expelled.

According to the petition, drafted by attorney Mark M. Hathaway of Werksmann, Jackson, Hathaway and Quinn, petitioner “John Doe” (a false name, in this instance justified) “continued performing oral sex” on a classmate “after she said, ‘Wait, I haven’t shaved.’ ” He thought she was concerned that “he might not want to continue performing oral sex because she hadn’t shaved,” evoking his response, “I don’t mind, it’s ok,” the pleading recites. It adds that “the female student put her hand on his head and moved or pushed his head while he was giving her oral sex.”

The college determined that this was “sexual misconduct” because, Hathaway recites, it viewed the female’s utterance as signaling “a withdrawal of consent due to hesitancy or uncertainty.”

Moreover, the college found, there was a “sexual assault” because the male engaged “in sexual intercourse without first obtaining verbal consent from the female student and relying instead upon non-verbal indications of consent, stopping when the female student said, ‘Ow, That hurts.’”'