I’M A DEMOCRAT; Secretary DeVos Is Right on Title IX Reform
I am a progressive Democrat and enthusiastic supporter of the new Title IX Rule that was recently issued by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
The DeVos Rule provides colleges and universities with a detailed and uniform modus operandi on how they must handle gender discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual assault disputes. The new regulations emphasize fairness, equitability, due process protections, and extensive supportive measures for all parties, all of which have been missing from the rescinded Obama-era guidance that the new Rule supersedes. In contrast, the well-intentioned Obama-era guidance was conspicuously undetailed, constitutionally and legally dubious, and decidedly unfair toward the accused.
I experienced the Obama-era guidance shortcomings in a 2014 Title IX debacle, and the DeVos rule addresses all of them.
Many Democratic leaders have taken a decidedly inconsiderate view toward the Rule by reflexive opposition through jade-colored lenses, but their appraisals make little sense and are inconsistent with the United States Constitution, legal precedent, and core American values.
The melodramatic assertion that the new Rule “flies in the face of common decency to require survivors to endure live hearings with live cross-examination by the perpetrator’s advisor of choice,” ignores the fact that cross-examination in a live hearing setting is a Constitutional requirement to which 150,000,000 other women in this country must abide when making a sexual assault allegation and ignores the fact that cross-examination has long been considered the greatest single legal engine that we have to truth-finding—the aim of any dispute resolution.
Meanwhile, the statement that “it is simply unjustifiable for the Department to require schools to dismiss many complaints of sexual harassment” is absurd. In fact, the new Rule mandates that a school must robustly address every complaint of sexual harassment but asserts that a school cannot formally investigate a complaint that does not rise to the level of sexual harassment. This is reasonable.
Finally, the use of the term “survivors” or “perpetrators” in context of approaching an investigation is prejudicial and has no place in any system of jurisprudence. It’s just wrong.
realcleareducation.com-Buddy Ullman
