Study: College students' realities don't align with schools' affirmative-consent standards for sex

Article here. Excerpt:

'Non-verbal cues figure in frequently with sexual consent among college students, and that may not comport with schools’ affirmative-consent rules, say two academics who spent one year interviewing a sample of northern California freshmen.

“The idea of affirmative consent has resulted in progressive advancement of college policies. But just because you make it clearer what we expect in terms of consent from a legal or policy standpoint, that doesn’t change the fact that people are limited in their ability to meet those expectations,” Jason Laker told Inside Higher Ed. A counselor education professor at San Jose State University, he worked on the study with Erica Boas, an adjunct lecturer at Santa Clara University.

More than 800 universities have adopted an affirmative-consent standard, according to a 2014 article. Also, California in 2015 passed a law requiring universities to adopt a standard of affirmative consent in their discipline policies. The policy changes followed more attention to campus sexual-misconduct issues, and a 2011 “Dear colleague” letter from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. It stated that sexual violence is among the offenses banned by Title IX, and also directed schools to use a preponderance-of-evidence standard, rather than a burden-of-proof standard, in sexual-misconduct hearings.'