The first panel features four senators — Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.; Dean Heller, R-Nev.; and Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H. All four were original sponsors of the Campus Accountability and Safety Act introduced in 2014, and all four are sponsors on the updated version introduced earlier this year.
CASA will surely be the focus of their panel, which is a shame because the bill is devoid of due process protections for accused students. When the bill was first introduced in 2014, I sent six questions to each of the original sponsors. Of the four sitting on the panel this Wednesday, only Ayotte’s office responded — and the response ignored a question about due process. A series of follow-up questions were never answered.
Neither Heller nor McCaskill’s office ever responded to the original questions. A staffer from Gillibrand’s office called me back but was uninterested in answering questions; instead, the staffer merely gave me an overview of the bill. . . .
Those are the eight people who will be addressing campus sexual assault on Wednesday. It is highly unlikely that even one of them will suggest that the draconian measures being thrust upon universities are fundamentally unfair and biased. Not one person is there to suggest that maybe colleges shouldn’t be adjudicating felonies. Not one person is there to suggest that if colleges do continue to adjudicate felonies, then they need to provide students the same protections an actual court of law would provide.
If you wanted to destroy academia, you couldn’t do a better job of what these people are doing. I expect this kind of thing from the Democrats, but it’s sad to see that, apparently, neither party gives a damn about actual justice or due process.
Please take this as the very ignorant question it is: What I have read (very briefly) is that some of the human factors stuff they are being criticized for is not space related and is known in “other industries”, presumably aircraft. The kinds of things I would expect from (not to slander anyone) Armadillo or someone, people that do not necessarily have a background in aircraft best-practices. Scaled Composites should have that knowledge. Just the habit of ordering readouts as dials rather than digital because “that’s how we’ve always done it” (something that makes a lot of sense now that it’s pointed out but I would never have thought of) seems like something they would know to do. Was there any mention of why it wasn’t done? Or if they did it some other way intentionally and it didn’t work?
Oh, wrong post. Sorry.
The last time the Republicans had control of congress I remember watching a particular subcommittee meeting on “women in science”. The Republicans were enthusiastically cheerleading quotas and “girls only” grants for special courses and while condemning meritocracy and actual equality of opportunity rather than results. That wasn’t the first nail in the coffin of my support for the Democrat lite -GOP, but it was close to the last.