MALES Don’t Apply Here
Virginia Tech, Occidental, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, UVA, USC, SMU, UNC, the State of New York, Colorado, Illinois, Virginia, Minnesota, California and Connecticut. These colleges and states have passed laws that are extremely biased against males. As anti-due process and anti-male continues, this list grows.
APPEALS COURT Rules USC Ran ‘Unfair’ Title IX Proceeding Against Expelled Fball Player
A state appeals court issued a reprieve to a football player expelled from the University of Southern California, finding that his Title IX proceeding was “unfair.” The private university owed former kicker Matt Boermeester a “meaningful opportunity to cross-examine critical witnesses at an in-person hearing,” a California Court of Appeal ruled recently.
USC opened its domestic-violence case in response to a neighbor’s report that Boermeester was abusing his girlfriend, fellow athlete Zoe Katz. USC had surveillance video from the alley where the Jan. 2017 playful incident took place, but refused to provide it to him. Zoe Katz accused the university of misrepresenting her statements and said that Title IX threatened her because she denied Boermeester abused her.
“We are very pleased that the Court of Appeal has again recognized that accused students under Title IX must have a meaningful opportunity to cross-examine critical witnesses at an in-person hearing,” Boermeester’s attorney Mark Hathaway wrote in a statement.
“It is gratifying that the new Federal Title IX regulations announced on May 6th will require the same fairness that Matt Boermeester has fought for so hard over the past three years, and finally won in the Court of Appeal today.”
thecollegefix-Troy Sargent
Share this:
MULTIPLE JUDGES Keep Rebuking Purdue For Title IX Kangaroo Courts.
Last year the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Purdue University had put an accused student through a “fundamentally unfair” Title IX proceeding. It didn’t review the investigative report before finding him guilty of sexual assault. It hid the report from him. It didn’t require his accuser to submit testimony or attend the adjudication hearing, much less submit to cross-examination. It ignored his accuser’s ulterior motive for accusing him.
The public university led by Mitch Daniels, the former Indiana governor and longed-for presidential candidate, doesn’t appear to have learned anything from that ruling. A federal judge has rebuked the taxpayer-funded institution for claiming she has no jurisdiction over a Title IX due process lawsuit by another accused student, and allowed all but one of the student’s claims to go forward.
As in the 7th Circuit ruling, Purdue’s conduct was so outrageous that U.S. District Judge Theresa Springmann didn’t even have to reach the question of whether “John Doe” has a constitutional right to cross-examine witnesses. His procedural claims were enough to survive the university’s motion to dismiss.
thecollegefix-Greg Piper
Share this:
TITLE IX Coordinator Melinda Stoops Tells How BC Will Avoid New Title IX Regs: ‘Re-Classify’
Boston College has spent millions of dollars defending against a single lawsuit by an accused student who claims it violated his due process. It’s appealing a jury award of more than $100,000 to “John Doe,” and yet a federal appeals court already ruled against the Jesuit institution once.
With the college facing new federal rules on how it must conduct sexual misconduct investigations, a Title IX official gave a curious interview to campus newspaper The Heights about how it will respond. Now that students accused of sexual misconduct must be given a live hearing with cross-examination, Title IX coordinator Melinda Stoops suggested the college can simply reclassify alleged violations under a different part of its code than Title IX.
Behavior that previously would have been covered under Title IX policy may now be investigated through the Office of Student Conduct, Stoops said.
The new rules from the Department of Education, which are scheduled to take effect in late summer, removed the responsibility of colleges to investigate incidents out of their “control,” meaning off-campus in activities and programs unrelated to the college. They also define sexual harassment by the Supreme Court’s three-part standard for educational settings: “severe, pervasive and objectively offensive.” That provision is expected to make it difficult for colleges to investigate fleeting speech-related claims, such as sex jokes.
thecollegefix-Greg Piper
Share this:
BOSTON College Legal Fees Jump To 7 Million in 3 Years For Title IX Due Process Case
At the rate it’s going, Boston College will spend several million in legal fees to defend itself against a single lawsuit by a student it found responsible for sexual assault. That’s according to student journalist Jack Goldman, who covered the litigation for the campus newspaper. Goldman gives a highly detailed recap of BC’s ongoing efforts to get last fall’s jury verdict thrown out, claiming that “no reasonable jury could have found” in favor of the accused student based on “the weight of the evidence” the jury saw. It may have trouble convincing Judge Denise Casper, however: While she often asked Doe’s counsel during trial “to reword the question to avoid issues not covered in the reduced scope of the case,” Casper rarely struck a question from being asked at all.
“Given that Doe did do exactly what Casper asked and rarely asked questions that were easily dismissed as out of bounds, it’s not clear how solid BC’s case for the motion actually is,” Goldman reported. The judge issued the jury’s final judgment last week but stayed the order so the college can appeal. The college has another problem, which is that the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals already overruled Casper once and faulted a BC administrator for admitting she didn’t see Doe’s hearing as a “search for truth.” The hearing panel also found Doe guilty of an allegation his accuser never made, apparently because it didn’t find her actual allegation credible.
The college spent about a third more on legal fees in FY18 ($2.16 million) than it did the previous year ($1.6 million), Goldman found. From FY16 through FY18, the college spent $5.26 million in legal fees. When FY19 figures are announced, they are likely to show the college spent more than $7 million on legal fees going back to 2016, the vast majority related to Doe’s case, which was filed that year, according to Goldman. “The exact dollar amount BC has spent on this case will never be public info since BC does not have to differentiate legal costs in one case from another on its 990 (it’s just a lump sum),” Goldman said:
thecollegefix-Greg Piper
Share this:
SHE ACCUSED Him Of Sex Assault But Stopped Participating After Being Told Her Claims Would Be Challenged
A female student at the University of Michigan who accused a male student of sexual assault backed out of her claims after a judge ruled the accused student would be allowed to cross-examine his accuser. The judge ordered UM to provide the accused student a “live hearing” and the ability to cross-examine his accuser. UM appealed the ruling to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but the accused student’s attorney, Deborah Gordon, filed a motion recently saying the appeal was moot because UM dropped the Title IX charges against her client.
UM tried to claim in court that John Doe was responsible for the case’s ongoing adjudication, saying the accuser had waited two years while John “and the district court prevent the University from completing its investigation into her allegations of rape and from conducting a hearing,” and tried to claim that Jane dropping out of the “fitful process” should serve as a reason for courts to stay out of “an ongoing process.”
Gordon, John’s attorney, responded by saying UM was “solely responsible for the trajectory of these events,” and that John was the victim here, having his life disrupted and continuing to live with a “significant cloud over him.”
dailywire-Schow
Share this:
UNC MUST Release Names Of Sexual Assault Perpetrators, NC Supreme Court Rules
UNC will be required to release the names of individuals found responsible for rape, sexual assault or related acts of sexual misconduct, according to a North Carolina Supreme Court ruling. The 4-3 decision ends a nearly four-year fight for records of the University’s sexual assault disciplinary proceedings. “We are deeply disappointed with today’s decision,” Joel Curran, UNC vice chancellor of communications said.
The DTH Media Corporation first filed the lawsuit against UNC in a coalition with three other N.C. media companies in the fall of 2016, claiming the University had violated North Carolina public records law by refusing to release the names, offenses and disciplinary actions for students or faculty found responsible for sexual misconduct. The University initially claimed that the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law that protects the privacy of student records, gave them discretion over whether or not to provide this information. The DTH and the coalition of other media groups argued that a FERPA exemption — which allows universities to disclose the result of disciplinary proceedings that find a student responsible for a violent crime — meant the school was required to release the information under state public records law.
dailytarheel.com-Lang
Share this:
BAD RULING. Male Sues Over Expulsion For Alleged TitleIX Violation. Will Not Be Reinstated
A student suing the University after he was expelled earlier this term over Title IX violations will not be able to finish the academic year, a federal court ruled. John Doe, sued the University on April 15, asserting that Princeton had violated Title IX, by expelling him for alleged violations of the University’s “Intimate Partner Violence” policy. On the same day, Doe filed a motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO). The TRO sought to prevent the University from enforcing, while Doe’s lawsuit is pending, its decisions to expel him and prohibit him from attending class and sitting for exams. In an opinion published on April 21, Judge Brian Martinotti agreed with the University, ruling that Doe is unlikely to succeed in his claims against Princeton.
According to the opinion, the lawsuit arose after Princeton’s Title IX Office investigated allegations of intimate partner violence brought against Doe by his ex-girlfriend, Jane Roe. In his ruling, Martinotti rejected Doe’s argument that the University had likely been motivated by gender bias. The judge ruled that Doe’s “conclusory allegations of gender bias” did not include “specific instances of gender bias” such as “statements by members of the disciplinary tribunal, statements by pertinent university officials,” or “patterns of decision-making that also tend to show the influence of gender.”
Instead, the court concluded that Doe had attempted to demonstrate gender bias by “pointing to the alleged disparate treatment he and Jane received throughout the investigation” and “the fact that Jane was given credibility for her version of the events while he was not.” But Doe’s allegations fell short because they did not claim that Jane’s gender was the basis for these differences, the court ruled. The court also rejected Doe’s arguments that Princeton was holding men to a different standard than women. Martinotti explained that to successfully make such a claim, a “male plaintiff must demonstrate that a female was in circumstances sufficiently similar to his own and was treated more favorably by the university.”
The Court also concluded that Doe would not suffer irreparable harms — an element of the high legal standard required of a plaintiff seeking a temporary injunction — as a result of his expulsion remaining in place while his suit against the University proceeds. Doe’s legal team asked the Court to “provisionally reinstate” him by allowing him to watch recorded classes, sit for spring exams, and have those exams graded and sealed, to be opened should he prevail in his suit. But the court rejected this request, too, ruling that because Doe’s claims will likely take months to completely resolve, he would still suffer the harm—a gap in his resume—whether or not he is provisionally reinstated. Yet, according to an April 21 letter to the judge by Princeton’s counsel, the University confirmed it is able “to take steps” to preserve existing and future recordings of John Doe’s lectures from this semester “for the pendency of this litigation.” As a result of the ruling, Doe’s expulsion will remain in place as he litigates his claims against the University.
dailyprincetonian-Sheinerman
Share this:
RULING For The Innocent Little Guy. A David & Goliath Story. Judge Slams UMich Policy Over Lack Of Due Process
When you can make sexual assault allegations with no possibility of being challenged, why wouldn’t you? After a stinging court ruling last month that ordered the University of Michigan to allow cross-examination and a “live hearing,” the female who accused John Doe of sexual misconduct has dropped out rather than face scrutiny.
UMich had appealed the district court ruling to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals shortly after it came down. Deborah Gordon, the accused student’s lawyer, told the 6th Circuit in a filing recently that the appeal was moot because UMich was dropping the Title IX proceeding. “This case should never have been necessary,” Gordon said, noting that UMich’s Title IX policy was found to be in violation of pre-existing 6th Circuit precedent.
Gordon accused the university of sowing “chaos” by suddenly scheduling a hearing in Doe’s case for April 22, right before a week of final exams started. He had already relocated to California following the COVID-19 closure of campus, and both parties were set to graduate in May. UMich pushed back when he asked for rescheduling after exams, making “several false representations” as to why it couldn’t postpone the hearing, Gordon claimed.
A day ahead of a court hearing on John’s emergency motion to postpone his Title IX proceeding, UMich “revealed the true reason” for the rush: It wanted to hold his degree. Less than an hour before its brief was due with the court, UMich’s Title IX coordinator emailed Gordon to notify her the proceeding would be “permanently closed.” John’s accuser informed the university that she “no longer wants to proceed or participate in the investigative resolution process.” Gordon disputed that the hearing depended on the accuser’s participation, which is not required by university policy: “It was solely the decision of the University – not the student– to close the entire process with no finding.”
Gordon told the 6th Circuit that public records requests show the university has spent $1.2 million so far on lawyers just in this case, which is nearly twice as much as it had spent as of last summer. Brooklyn College Prof. KC Johnson, who chronicles Title IX litigation, speculated that the university was appealing in spite of the canceled proceeding so it wouldn’t have to pay Gordon attorney’s fees.
thecollegefix.com-Piper campusreform.org-McInturff
Share this:
SETTLEMENT. GOOD NEWS For John Doe. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Settled.
Rensselaer Polytechnic has a reputation for guilt presuming sex policies and immoral treatment of Title IX accused males. RPI has settled before with a falsely accused male student. Here is RPI’s 2018 settlement.
As always, thanks to KC Johnson. Alice
Share this: