Innocent until proven guilty? Not under ‘yes means yes.’

Article here. Excerpt:

'Affirmative consent, the latest policy intended to prevent sexual assault, has roiled college campuses. Those who advocate for affirmative consent legislation say those who want to have sex should be required to discuss and verbally agree to such activity before it happens. Opponents say that such stringent requirements de-romanticize what should be a subtle, interactive process often based on nonverbal cues.
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The second aspect of the consent rule is what I call the “enforcement principle.” It involves how the system — whether it be the legal system or the academic disciplinary system — decides whether a given sexual act did or did not receive consent. Here I would insist on the actual Blackstonian principle being applied. Even though it is better for 10 potentially welcomed sexual acts not to occur than for one non-consented act to take place, it simply doesn’t follow that the same calculus should be applied in the context of enforcement and punishment on a college campus. In that very different context, it is better for 10 individuals who did not obtain consent to go free than for even one individual who did obtain consent to be wrongfully punished. Being wrongfully punished can be catastrophic for a student.

This is where universities are making a dreadful mistake.  Fearful of being sued by the federal government, many schools have made it easier both to report accusations of sexual assault (a good thing) and to find a student guilty based on low standards of proof (a bad thing).  Rather than requiring proof beyond a reasonable doubt – the standard of evidence required to reach a conviction in a normal court system – many schools are willing to deliver a guilty verdict and permit punishment to be imposed based on a mere preponderance of the evidence: a showing that there is no more than a 51 percent likelihood that the assault occurred.'