Tell Sen. Patty Murray: 'Due process IS America'

From SAVE Services:

Tomorrow morning, the Senate HELP Committee will hold a hearing on "Addressing Campus Sexual Assault and Ensuring Student Safety and Rights."

In the past, Sen. Patty Murray, who is the highest ranking Democrat on the Committee, has often pushed the "one in five" fake statistic in order to justify the existence of the campus Kangaroo Courts.

Somehow, Murray has forgotten that all Americans, including college students, are guaranteed due process by the Constitution.

So please telephone Murray's office at (202) 224-2621. Tell her, "Due process IS America!"

Better yet, tell her to watch the attached video, "Due Process Goes to School:"

Sincerely,
The SAVE Team

Or if you prefer to email her you can do that. The more of us she hears from the better.

It’s Time To Defund The Out-Of-Control War On Due Process For College Students

Since 2011, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has blatantly violated college students’ rights to free speech and due process. Congress has done nothing to fix this abuse of power. Its members are, in fact, currently entertaining President Barack Obama’s proposal to increase OCR’s budget by $137.7 million of funding for the 2017 fiscal year.

When do we, as students, say enough is enough?

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is responsible for enforcing Title IX at federally-funded colleges and universities. Title IX is a federal statute that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender in educational programs that receive federal funds. The Office for Civil Rights has authority over almost all of the nation’s colleges and universities because almost all of them receive federal funds for their educational operations.

The Office for Civil Rights often gives schools guidance on how to maintain compliance with Title IX’s mandates. In years past, such guidance properly balanced prohibiting acts of harassment with protecting the free speech and due process rights of students. In 2001, for example, the office’s guidance adhered to the Supreme Court’s legal definition of sexual harassment. In an effort to defend students’ rights to due process, the 2001 guidance also granted schools the ability to develop their own specialized procedures for handling sexual misconduct disciplinary hearings. The 2003 guidance explicitly separated Title IX enforcement policies from protected speech.

However, the guidance provided five years ago by the Office for Civil Rights guidance — in a now-notorious 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter — ruined this balance.

The policy promulgated in the 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter lacked the well-crafted protections which enabled institutions to prohibit Title IX violations and promote free speech.

Obama’s Office for Civil Rights has redefined sexual harassment as mere “unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.” Under “Dear Colleague” letter’s directives, single instances of “jokes,” “insulting sounds” and “degrading remarks” can constitute Title IX violations. The “Dear Colleague” letter has created an atmosphere in which sexual harassment no longer needs to be pervasive or even “objectively offensive.”

The 2011 directives are a drastic, radical shift from the Education Department’s past conformity to Supreme Court precedent and guarantee of First Amendment protections.

According to a federal judge, the 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter also advised disciplinary proceedings which deny accused students the “most basic and fundamental components of due process of law.” The “Dear Colleague” letter has created a bizarre situation which strips America’s college students of many due process rights. Accused students no longer have the ability to see the evidence filed against them. They no longer have the right to an impartial decision-making panel. They no longer are availed the use of a standard of evidence that is consistent with the severity of the charges filed. They are denied the right to have an appeals process that allows a case to be completely reevaluated after the accused party has been found innocent.

The Office of Civil Rights claims that the 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter is not binding upon all colleges and universities. In fact, however, the office has threatened to pull federal funding from those schools that do not comply with these policies. Thus, fearful college officials all over the country have adopted its restrictions on constitutional rights.

Prior to making a decision on the office’s funding request, the Senate Appropriations Committee adheres to a period of public commentary. During this period, citizens can submit their opinions regarding funding requests in the form of public testimonial.

I am a freshman at Tufts University. My fellow students at Tufts and my peers at schools around the country can no longer afford to allow Congress to further fund an agency that conducts itself in a way that fails to provide basic free speech and due process rights. I have drafted a letter of testimony asking the Senate to place a hold on the Office for Civil Rights funding request until it readjusts its policies to guarantee students’ rights to free speech and due process.

Thus far, Tamas Takata, James Grant, and I have accumulated over 320 student signatures of support for my testimonial. These signatures include the name of the supporting students and the schools they attend. If you are a college student who wishes to add your name to this testimonial in support, please contact me at jaketg19@gmail.com.

Source

If you click on "proposal" it will take you to a PDF page that shows members of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The two that I contacted are Senator Thad Cochran and Senator Roy Blunt. The other two Senators Patty Murray and Barbara Mikulski are feminists so I wouldn't bother with them. The more of us that counter feminists lies the better so let them know today.

VAWA goes down in flames

House GOP blocks Violence Against Women Act
By Steve Benen - Wed Jan 2, 2013 2:13 PM EST

Associated Press
Sen. Patty Murray has been the Democratic point person on the Violence Against Women Act. Congress had a lengthy to-do list as the end of the year approached, with a series of measures that needed action before 2013 began. Some of the items passed (a fiscal agreement, a temporary farm bill), while others didn't (relief funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy).

And then there's the Violence Against Women Act, which was supposed to be one of the year's easy ones. It wasn't.

Back in April, the Senate approved VAWA reauthorization fairly easily, with a 68 to 31 vote. The bill was co-written by a liberal Democrat (Vermont's Pat Leahy) and a conservative Republican (Idaho's Mike Crapo), and seemed on track to be reauthorized without much of a fuss, just as it was in 2000 and 2005.

But House Republicans insisted the bill is too supportive of immigrants, the LGBT community, and Native Americans -- and they'd rather let the law expire than approve a slightly expanded proposal. Vice President Biden, who helped write the original law, tried to persuade House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to keep the law alive, but the efforts didn't go anywhere.

And so, for the first time since 1994, the Violence Against Women Act is no more. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the Democratic point person on VAWA, said in a statement:

The House Republican leadership's failure to take up and pass the Senate's bipartisan and inclusive VAWA bill is inexcusable. This is a bill that passed with 68 votes in the Senate and that extends the bill's protections to 30 million more women. But this seems to be how House Republican leadership operates. No matter how broad the bipartisan support, no matter who gets hurt in the process, the politics of the right wing of their party always comes first.

Proponents of the law hope to revive the law in the new Congress, starting from scratch, but in the meantime, there will be far fewer resources available for state and local governments to combat domestic violence.

As for electoral considerations, Republicans lost badly in the 2012 elections, thanks in large part to the largest gender gap in modern times, but if that changed GOP attitudes towards legislation affecting women, the party is hiding it well.

Update: Reader AG asks about the House version that was approved several months ago. As I reported at the time, the House gutted the bipartisan Senate bill with a watered-down version, which was widely seen by everyone involved as a joke that undermined the interests of victims. It had no support in the Senate and drew a White House veto threat. House Republicans knew this, and instead of revisiting the issue and/or working with the Senate on a compromise, GOP leaders simply decided the law was not a priority. The result was this week's outcome.

Source: click here

Now this truly is a belated Christmas gift. We did it. With everyone's help is getting the message out and the truth about VAWA we were able to let everyone know that we mean business. The second good news is the incoming Congress is more libertarian minded than the outgoing Congress was which means that their best chance of passing VAWA just left town. That doesn't mean we get complacent not by any means. If VAWA should rear its ugly head again we take it down. Until then pat yourselves of the back for a job well done.