Campus Hook-Up Culture and Title IX Sex Police Meet Due Process

Article here. Excerpt:

'The sexual misconduct case of John Doe v. Grinnell College just settled, joining over 200 other such cases vindicating male students falsely accused of nonconsensual sexual relations on campus. It appears the college hook-up culture is moving from Title IX sex police to courtroom due process.

Title IX is the federal law which bans sex discrimination at schools receiving federal funds. Since 2011, when President Obama’s Education Department declared in a Dear Colleague Letter that sexual violence was a form of sex discrimination, it has required campuses to expand Title IX offices with coordinators, investigators, and adjudicators to handle sexual misconduct complaints. Acting as law enforcement, judge, and jury, these officials are sometimes referred to as the campus sex police.
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Sensing that both the process and the personnel favored complainants from the start, Doe sued the College in March of 2017, claiming the school itself had violated Title IX by discriminating against him on the basis of sex. He also stated that Ternus’s off-the-record communications violated Grinnell’s own policies and his due process rights­—specifically, his right to a neutral judge.

In July, an Iowa federal trial court gave Doe almost complete vindication. In a ruling by Obama appointee, Rebecca Ebinger, the Court noted that the Grinnell policy required an impartial decision-maker and that the off-the-record communications here not only called that objectivity into question but also cast doubt on the legitimacy of the outcome. Even more seriously, the Court decided that Ternus herself seemed biased against Doe, in particular because she ignored exculpatory evidence of consent, including statements by the second female student that, “I turned back towards him, and was like I—I responded—I like kissed him … I guess I just felt like fine, it’s just sex.”'