Nearly 100 law professors from 50 universities signed on to a new white paper that will fundamentally change how campus rape allegations are tried if adopted. These professors want to treat campus sexual assaults as violations of a person's civil rights under Title IX discrimination laws whether an actual crime was committed or not.
Hosted at FeministLawProfessors.com, the white paper supports the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) “Dear Colleague Letter” issued in 2011 which set the guidelines for schools to use a preponderance of the evidence standard of proof in Title IX proceedings. The preponderance standard is the sole measure in which discrimination cases are tried. It works like this, as noted at The Huffington Post:
The preponderance standard essentially means an accused person can be found guilty if the adjudicator or panel believes there’s a 51 percent chance the allegations against the individual are true. In other words, a jury would rule based on whose side they believe more.
The Education Department twisted how these cases should be tried to view feelings as more important than evidence and that's in direct conflict with criminal case standards which require “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” This has gotten the agency sued by men formerly accused of rape and sexual assault whose cases were affected by this stealth change.
But the professor's side with the Education Department and argue that not using the preponderance standard is “incompatible with the agency’s mission to secure gender equality in education:"
By insisting on such equal treatment of sexual harassment complainants, OCR is ensuring that victims of sexual harassment will be treated no worse than victims of racial and other harassment are when they must prove their allegations.
What this really comes down to is making sure males aren’t presumed innocent so long as there’s a female with a compelling “rape” story. One of the organizers of the white paper, Chicago-Kent College of Law professor Katharine Baker, makes this abundantly clear:
“There is a mistaken tendency to assume that the Department of Education is policing rape on college campuses and should therefore use the background norms of criminal law as an appropriate model for adjudication procedures. In fact, the department is responding to the overwhelming evidence that a culture of male sexual entitlement permeates college campuses and that women suffer disproportionately from having to live, study, and try to learn in that environment.”
Take heed, male college freshmen, your right to a fair trial is slowly evaporating.
