The policy continues its descent into madness in California:
A student found responsible for campus sexual assault is often branded a rapist in local (and often national) media, his transcript is forever marked and his reputation is forever tarnished. And let’s not forget that a finding of responsibility can be achieved on nothing more than an accusation, with exculpatory evidence and witnesses ignored and a complete lack of due process.
An expulsion with a mark on the transcript could keep him from continuing his education. When accused students have been suspended and allowed to return to campus, outrage has sometimes ensued. Colleges are now being pressured simply to expel. Expelled students — again, expelled based on nothing more than an accusation — find it nearly impossible to transfer to another school. Their education is halted, and if they can’t afford an attorney to sue the university for wrongful expulsion, their lives are put on hold.
As one male student told Buzzfeed: “At first I thought they didn’t want me to participate in campus activities. Then I thought they didn’t want me to graduate. Now they don’t want me to have a job or be part of society. Do they want me to commit suicide? Is that what they want me to do? What is the endgame?”
We need some lawsuits over this. If I had a son, I wouldn’t let him attend school in the state.
The endgame is the return of single-sex education institutions.
Then we will get to hear about how evil it is to separate the genders. Its almost as if the intent is to keep swaying one way to the other but always in a continuous revolution…
Except the real goal is to ensure the universities are all female. Since the HR industry now requires a degree for almost any non-trivial job, that will ensure that men don’t get any.
I presume you missed the part where all-female institutions are admirable, but all-male institutions are SEXIST?
I think that’s the core of dysfunction. Nothing will ever be right no matter how extravagant the remedy because the real problems are internal not external. The only way I see this ending is to marginalize the people projecting their internal problems on the world. Even their nominal allies will do it, if only to regain the ability to do something. How that happens depends on what sort of society we have left by that time.
I’m waiting for the day when some campus cops and kangaroo courts so taint a legitimate sex assault/rape case that it can’t be prosecuted in the real legal system. Who in their right mind believes having that a bunch of untrained, unqualified, and largely unaccountable college administrators felony accusations is a good idea? All felony accusations should be turned over to the legitimate legal authorities immediately for investigation and possible prosecution.
Colleges have their own legal system for more than just rapes though. Maybe this rape hysteria unwinding will lead to less abuse of collegiate authority in other areas?
I was in a fraternity and we had to jump through all of these regulations on social gatherings. We had to check IDs. File guest lists with the college and the liquor control board. Apply for permits to have a social gathering. Have so much food on hand. And on and on.
Meanwhile we were demonized by the Democrats on campus as being closed and insular. Well, we would have loved to have some beers with you but your college administrators made the rule that we have to invite people in advance and aren’t allowed to alter our guest lists.
Did the football, track, or women’s soccer team have to do any of this for their parties? Nope and neither did any student that wasn’t in a fraternity. Much like with hunters, fishers, and gun owners, Democrats pick a group of people they dislike and then regulate them punitively.
The beautiful thing is that by adhering to the rules, we perpetuated stereotypes given to us by the anti-Greeks who use the outcomes of their policies as justification for more regulations and hatred in general.
But these are not felony charges, these are accusations of academic misconduct. Think of it that they couldn’t convict someone of murder so they sue them for wrongful death in a civil trial, with a monetary penalty as the outcome.
Usually the wrongful death tort claim waits for the criminal proceedings to run their course, but who knows how these things work out in the legal system.
When you attend the U as a student or work for the U as faculty or staff or administration, you are agreeing to a code of conduct. You might ask, “when did I agree to those things?” and it is in the “fine print”, whether you were told about them during orientation or not. So many actions that turn out to be felonies turn about to be “against the rules”, and that you are not charged or convicted of a felony doesn’t mean that you don’t have to account for your actions in the Principal’s Office, or at the U, the Dean of Students.
Just as if you are convicted of murder, you go to prison or are put to death, if you are judged to have committed a wrongful death, you have to pay someone some money, with the U, you are expelled as a student or fired as faculty (even if you have tenure). And a notation is made on your transcript or employment record.
The fun thing about the penalty assessed for breaking the rules at the U, expulsion (student) employment termination (faculty or other worker) is that it can be almost as damaging to your life going forward as a criminal conviction. OK, maybe not, but perhaps as damaging as a less-than honorable discharge from the military.
As to “kangaroo court”, you voluntarily agreed to abide by their rules that includes kangaroo court — it is one of these “voluntary association” things, the U does not accuse some random person off the street. But if your reputation is damaged by a dodgy procedure at the U for determining rule breakage, I am not so sure that your agreeing to be subject to dodgy proceedings is a defense in a civil lawsuit against the U. I kinda doubt even a public U has any kind of sovereign immunity.
And there is this whole cottage industry of tort lawyers looking for new people to sue. That ‘tude on the part of lawyers was once looked down upon, but it has been the view of right-thinking people since the 60’s and Ralph Nader that this sort of thing needs to be encouraged.
When the U finds itself up to its neck in lawsuits, can you say “irony”? Yes, I knew your could!
Women are filing rape complaints at universities. The last time I looked, rape is a felony criminal act. Sexual assault might be a felony or a misdemeanor depending on the severity of the allegations. Those are both serious crimes and should be handled by professional law enforcement, not a bunch of academic administrators whose training is probably nothing more rigorous than watching “Law & Order: SVU.”
C’mon people, O.J. went on trial for murder, which is as serious felony wise as it gets, and he was acquited. He was then sued by the father of one of the victims in civil court, found liable on the basis of shoes, a type that had left gruesome footprints at the crime scene but he denied that we would be caught wearing such unattractive footwear, yet he was seen with them on in a photograph of him as a sportscaster, making him guilty of a henious crime by the much less demaning standard of proof in a civil lawsuit, and then he had to pay a lot of money.
What part of this or the analogy I drew to campus kangaroo courts did not make any sense? I am not saying that either the campus “courts” or O.J. getting sued for something a criminal proceedings deemed there was insufficient proof is right, and I am just saying that this is “the system.”
In terms of academic over reach, I once sold a “shrink wrap” software package to a public university where I was required to submit my “employee drug policy.”
Each software order can be different in requiring different requirements to register as a vendor, but that one looked to be more effort that it was worth. I have only one employee, I don’t abuse drugs, what else am I supposed to say?
I wanted the sale, so I drafted an employee drug policy. “Employees of Paul Milenkovic, Sole Proprieter, are reminded that illegal drugs are illegal. If caught violating drug laws, an employee could go to jail and then not be able to carry out their duties. Employees are strongly encouraged to obey the law on drugs so they don’t go to jail and are able to carry out their duties.”
I’d like to suggest that, if you’re a guy and you must attend one of these colleges, the best policy is to refuse to have any romantic involvement whatsoever with any female student or staff on campus (probably a wise course of action anyway at this point). But even this might not make you immune from a false accusation. It’s not clear to me that an accusation lacking any evidence whatsoever would never be pursued by these quasi-judicial entities.
Then again, now that I read the description of the new bill: “to expel students for sexual misconduct even if the accuser isn’t a student and the alleged incident occurred off-campus” …perhaps even that is not enough.
Explore celibacy, young man. This is what the Sexual Revolution has come to.
Oh, this policy won’t stay in just the colleges. It’ll wind its way through the deep state in the usual social engineering sequence (in approximate path of least resistance): Colleges, Military, Government Agencies, Private Employer Liability to finally Society at Large. It should only take a generation or so.
If the SJWs aren’t rooted out, none of those things will exist in another generation, because there’ll have been either a civil war or an economic collapse.