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GOOD NEWS. DeVos Expected to Change Campus Sex Assault Proceedings To Be Fair

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GOOD NEWS. DeVos Expected to Change Campus Sex Assault Proceedings To Be Fair

DeVos has argued that the policy put in place under President Barack Obama is skewed against the accused. She is expected to issue new rules in the near future. At stake is whether schools should require higher standards of evidence when handling complaints and whether both parties should have access to that evidence. Also under review is the use of mediators and the possibility of the accuser and the accused cross-examining each other. When issuing temporary guidance last year, DeVos said she was looking for a more balanced approach.

Cynthia Garett, who heads Families Advocating for Campus Equality, said one false accusation can ruin a student’s life. She said many of the accused students she represents experienced traumatic flashbacks when they watched Kavanaugh testify. Garett said she supports DeVos’ plan to give a greater voice to the accused.

“It is no longer going to be easy to find someone guilty,” Garett said. “But justice has never been easy and it shouldn’t be easy to ruin someone’s life.”

businessinsider

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JUDGE RULES: Lawsuit Against Boston College Going to Jury Trial

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JUDGE RULES: Lawsuit Against Boston College Going to Jury Trial

Judge Denise Casper has ordered the breach of contract lawsuit pending against Boston College to a jury trial.  Breach of contract and basic fairness claims made by the plaintiff, who claims BC mishandled his case when he was accused of sexual assault, will be considered during the trial. It is the first breach of contract lawsuit to go to jury trial after the “Dear Colleague” letter was issued in 2011 by the Obama administration that redefined Title IX guidelines. It is the second due process lawsuit to go to a jury trial: In 2011—eight months after the Obama letter was issued—the University of the South went to trial with a plaintiff identified only as “John Doe.” Doe won $26,500 of a requested $5.5 million on a fairness of process argument. Charles Wayne, one of the lawyers who argued on behalf of the plaintiff against the University of the South, is arguing the case on behalf of the plaintiff in the lawsuit against BC. The plaintiff is seeking expungement of his disciplinary record and $3 million in damages.

bcheights.com By Jack Goldman

 

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5 SIGNS You’re In The Midst Of A Moral Panic

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5 SIGNS You’re In The Midst Of A Moral Panic

Moral panics, or instances of mass hysteria, have occurred throughout history. Two of the most notorious are the Salem Witch Trials and the Satanic Panic. The panics almost exclusively involve women and children and fears for their safety, especially from sexual abuse. We are in the midst of another such panic. The current panic has been playing out in the military and on college campuses for nearly a decade, but with the advent of the #MeToo movement, the mass hysteria is creeping into our regular legal system as well. The following are five of the biggest signs that we are experiencing another bout of mass hysteria, this time over sexual assault and harassment.

1. Due Process Goes Out The Window Due process is the cornerstone of our legal system, but in times of mass hysteria, it becomes the enemy.

2. “Believe The Victim” This may be the biggest tell of a moral panic.

3. Misleading And Faulty Statistics In today’s sex assault panic, we see multiple inflated statistics allegedly confirming an epidemic.

4. Evidence, Schmevidence In today’s sexual assault panic, the dismissal of exculpatory evidence runs rampant. On college campuses, accusers who continue to socialize with men they later accuse of sexual assault and who sent flirtacious and friendly text messages are said to be showing signs of trauma.

5. Pseudo-Scientific Theories About Memory Reign Supreme The science of memories always pops up during moral panics. On college campuses, therapists, friends, and school administrators help corrupt accuser’s memories (which are often foggy due to alcohol) by telling them that a drunken hook-up was actually sexual assault. Once the idea is implanted, an accuser fills in the gaps in their memory with the idea that they must have been sexually assaulted, and interpret consensual acts in that way.

dailywire.com By Ashe Schow

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LAWSUIT: Univ.of Arkansas Punishes Exonerated Male After Female Accuser Goes on Media Blitz

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LAWSUIT: Univ.of Arkansas Punishes Exonerated Male After Female Accuser Goes on Media Blitz

A student found responsible for sexual assault claims that his accuser tried to commit suicide because he refused to stay with her after their consensual sexual encounter. The federal due-process lawsuit against the University of Arkansas alleges that it failed to follow its own rules and ran a Title IX investigation designed to “achieve a predetermined false and unsupported result” against the accused student. The suit claims Doe was deprived of 14th Amendment rights because the process was not “commensurate with the seriousness of the allegations and the potential discipline, sanctions, and repercussions he was facing.” The university “improperly shifted the burden” of proof to Doe in the appeal “to protect the University from the continued scrutiny regarding its treatment of sexual harassment cases and Jane Roe’s continued attacks and negative publicity.” Doe suggests that his accuser’s “media blitz” following the “confidential Title IX process” was the reason his initial exoneration was overturned on appeal. All of these circumstances show that the university and its officials “have demonstrated a pattern of inherent and systematic gender bias and discrimination against male students accused of misconduct,” the suit concludes.

thecollegefix By Greg Piper

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REMEMBER STUDENT THOMAS KLOCKE. He was Wrongly Accused. No Hearing. Presumed Guilty. He Killed Himself.

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REMEMBER STUDENT THOMAS KLOCKE. He was Wrongly Accused. No Hearing. Presumed Guilty. He Killed Himself.

September is false allegation month, and SOS is focusing on college males that are falsely accused, and denied a fair hearing/due process to defend their innocence. This is a very sad and true story of Thomas Klocke. Thomas was 24 years old and a Senior at the University of Texas at Arlington. On June 2, 2016, Thomas committed suicide-mere days after learning that he’d been disciplined for allegedly “harassing” a gay student. His family says he took his life because he was distraught that he’d been wrongfully punished for harassment and banned from class without a fair review. UTA’s mishandling of the case destroyed the Southlake 24-year-old’s academic future and reputation, according to a lawsuit his father, Wayne, filed in April of 2017 against the university and the student who accused him. “This case serves to highlight just how potentially devastating the consequences are when a student is denied fair process,” said family attorney Kenneth Chaiken, alleging the school violated Title IX procedures… Suicide is a complicated phenomenon, but no one should believe that crackdowns come without cost or that due process is an abstract concept, a mere inconvenience that stands in the way of social justice.

A Suicide in Texas By French Family Says Son Wrongfully Punished By Farmer

 

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JUDGE RULES FOR Due Process & Against Univ. of New Mexico, Putting a Dagger in Obama’s TIX Guidance

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JUDGE RULES FOR Due Process & Against Univ. of New Mexico, Putting a Dagger in Obama’s TIX Guidance

It’s one judge’s ruling, but if it catches on, it’s a dagger in the heart of the Obama administration’s Title IX guidance, still widely used by universities even though it’s been rescinded. U.S. District Judge James Browning refused to dismiss due process claims against the University of New Mexico in a five-page order last week. He told the taxpayer-funded institution that plaintiff “J. Lee” has “alleged facts sufficient to state a plausible Fourteenth Amendment procedural due process claim” against the board of regents and president of the university. Lee alleged that the university violated his liberty and property interests by ruining his “good reputation” and expelling him for allegedly sexual misconduct.  Judge Browning wrote:

“Lee’s allegations plausibly support a finding that his sexual misconduct investigation resolved into a problem of credibility such that a formal or evidentiary hearing, to include the cross-examination of witnesses and presentation of evidence in his defense, is essential to basic fairness. Moreover, the Court concludes that preponderance of the evidence is not the proper standard for disciplinary investigations such as the one that led to Lee’s expulsion, given the significant consequences of having a permanent notation such as the one UNM placed on Lee’s transcript.”

By finding that the long-lasting consequences of a sexual-misconduct finding justify a higher evidence standard, Browning is taking direct aim at the Department of Education’s six-year mandate that colleges use the preponderance standard regardless of the consequences faced by an accused student. According to Brooklyn College Prof. KC Johnson, co-author of The Campus Rape Frenzy, this is the first explicit holding against the preponderance standard’s use in Title IX proceedings, at least in sexual-misconduct cases.

thecollegefix.com By Greg Piper

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MONTAGUE UPDATE: Did Yale Violate Law & Destroy Notes in Sex-Misconduct Proceedings?

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MONTAGUE UPDATE: Did Yale Violate Law & Destroy Notes in Sex-Misconduct Proceedings?

The power to fine universities or yank federal funding from them is seldom used by the Department of Education in Title IX investigations. The department does pay close attention to some legal violations, however: those involving the Clery Act. The 1990 law requires schools to compile and publish data on campus crime, including sexual assault, and Yale may have violated it by destroying notes in sexual-misconduct proceedings. The allegation was made in a July legal filing by Jack Montague, the former Yale basketball team captain who was expelled from the school in 2016 on sexual-assault allegations. He’s been suing Yale for more than two years for running an alleged kangaroo court that went so far as to lie to his accuser to compel her participation. When Yale sought to have the case dismissed ahead of a jury trial, Montague reminded the judge that his lawsuit had compelled the university to acknowledge that its University-Wide Committee on Sexual Misconduct destroys its panelists’ notes after the appeals process concludes. This “practice” is not disclosed anywhere in writing, a Yale official said in a deposition, and admitted the notes might be “relevant” to accused students who are considering legal action against Yale.

thecollegefix.com By Greg Piper

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EDUC DEPART. Responds to Critics who say TitleIX Draft Could Hurt Accused Students

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EDUC DEPART. Responds to Critics who say TitleIX Draft Could Hurt Accused Students

Some commenters have noted that the department’s draft is out of step with the past year’s precedent from the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Its most recent decision in a campus due-process case, against the University of Michigan, not only requires colleges to allow cross-examination in sexual-misconduct cases that turn on credibility but appears to preclude them from using the single-investigator model. The draft emphasizes that the department is proposing the first binding regulations since its 1975 regulations. Previous administrations used a series of guidance documents that left all parties, from universities to advocates for survivors and accused students, in a position of  “uncertainty about whether the guidance was or was not legally binding.” The draft’s confirmation that universities don’t have to offer live hearings – even though they must offer a method that “effectively substitutes” for cross-examination in non-hearing proceedings – has puzzled some lawyers and academics. The draft indeed does not explain this. All it says is that for colleges using a “non-hearing model,” each party must be allowed to submit written questions for the investigator to ask “the other party and witnesses in a manner that effectively substitutes for cross-examination.”  The law firm Zalkind Duncan & Bernstein zeroed in on how these changes to hearings versus non-hearings could affect proceedings. In a Friday blog post partner Ruth O’Meara-Costello wrote, “Unfortunately, it seems very likely that colleges and universities, many of which have taken strong positions against allowing cross-examination, will respond to the rules by simply eschewing actual hearings in favor of the increasingly popular single-investigator model.” “[R]espondents may lose more than they gain from the cross-examination mandate in hearings if colleges simply drop the hearing model in response.”

Ed.Dept exchange @ College Fix By Greg Piper

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