Victims and Microaggressions: Why 2015 Was The Year Students Lost Their Minds

Article here. Excerpt:

'2015 was the year that Emma Sulkowicz graduated from Columbia University carrying her mattress across the stage as the ultimate symbol the school had failed her as a sexual assault victim.

It was also the year that her accused rapist, Paul Nungesser, filed a federal complaint against the school, citing gender discrimination under Title IX for “condoning a hostile educational environment” against him, even after he was cleared of sexual assault charges.

The same Title IX protections that sexual assault victim advocates were using to create sweeping federal reforms began to be used by the (almost uniformly) male students who were expelled or suspended.

"I think that what’s happening is that the pendulum has swung so far over to the side of unfair campus proceedings that lawyers for some of the accused students are trying everything they can to get a fair hearing,” civil rights attorney Harvey Silverglate told The Daily Beast in April.

The sentiment that sexual assault reforms had gone too far and now violated the rights of the accused to a fair investigation and trial was voiced by a number of law professors in 2015.

In February, more than a dozen professors at the University of Pennsylvania publicly expressed their concern in an open letter. “Due process of law is not window dressing… All too often, outrage at heinous crimes becomes a justification for shortcuts in our adjudicatory process.”

“Yes means yes,” or affirmative consent, became an even more prominent objective.'