Showing posts with label universities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label universities. Show all posts
Monday, April 1, 2019
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.
Thursday, September 6, 2018
Secretary of Education shuts down Obama's kangaroo courts
A judicial process that doesn’t allow the accused to cross-examine his accuser or reliably see the evidence against him is a civil libertarian’s nightmare. It traduces every principle of fairness and is blatantly un-American.
Yet Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is about to get savaged for replacing just such a process with something more in keeping with our longstanding legal norms.
The Education Department is preparing new rules that would roll back the monstrously unfair Obama-era requirements for how colleges handle sexual-assault and harassment allegations. It will be a significant advance for due process, which is almost as out of style on campus as free speech.
In one of its least defensible actions, the Obama administration used its Office for Civil Rights to impose its preferred procedures for handling sexual-assault cases on all the universities in the country that receive federal funds. It did it via a 19-page “Dear Colleague” letter, in the name of Title IX, the provision in federal law prohibiting sexual discrimination in education.
The process was terrible. It blew right by the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires public notice and comment before such rules go into effect. And the substance was worse. If the letter reads as if it was written by inflamed activists who had no interest in balanced proceedings, that’s because it was.
It required colleges to adopt a “preponderance of evidence” standard rather than a “clear and convincing” standard.
It more or less forbade colleges from allowing the cross-examination of accusers.
It adopted a remarkably broad definition of sexual harassment to include “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature.”
The administration also encouraged the use of a “single investigator-adjudicator system,” i.e., one person as investigator, judge and jury.
The Obama rules are medieval in the sense that they ignore central developments in Anglo-American justice that arose hundreds of years ago.
In their important book “The Campus Rape Frenzy,” KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr. describe how the rules often played out: “Start with an alcohol-soaked set of facts that no state’s criminal law would consider sexual assault. Add an incomplete ‘investigation,’ unfair procedures, and a disciplinary panel uninterested in evidence of innocence. Stir in a de facto presumption of guilt based on misguided Obama administration dictates, ideological zeal, and fear of bad publicity.”
The result has, inevitably, been jaw-dropping miscarriages of justice. Everyone should want perpetrators of sexual assault to be punished — and in the criminal-justice system, not just by colleges — but elementary protections for the accused can’t be discarded in the process.
One reason the Obama rules were so lopsided is that they were crafted in an atmosphere of moral panic. It was assumed that there was a spiraling epidemic of sexual assault on campus. Taylor and Johnson note, to the contrary, that sexual assaults of female college students dropped by more than half between 1997 and 2013, and that young women in college are less likely to be assaulted than those who are not in college.
The Obama rules have been receiving a battering in the courts, where due process is still taken seriously.
A US district court judge wrote in a 2016 ruling against Brandeis University: “If a college student is to be marked for life as a sexual predator, it is reasonable to require that he be provided a fair opportunity to defend himself and an impartial arbiter to make that decision. Put simply, a fair determination of the facts requires a fair process, not tilted to favor a particular outcome, and a fair and neutral fact-finder, not predisposed to reach a particular conclusion.”
This is the animating spirit behind the DeVos changes. They are still being formulated, but a New York Times report suggests that they will correct the worst excesses of the Obama rules and interject fairness into proceedings that were, shamefully, designed to lack it.
Source
Let's thank Betsy Devos: Betsy.Devos@ed.gov and let her know that what she is doing is fantastic and that we fully support it and her. The more of us they hear from the better so let's do it.
Yet Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is about to get savaged for replacing just such a process with something more in keeping with our longstanding legal norms.
The Education Department is preparing new rules that would roll back the monstrously unfair Obama-era requirements for how colleges handle sexual-assault and harassment allegations. It will be a significant advance for due process, which is almost as out of style on campus as free speech.
In one of its least defensible actions, the Obama administration used its Office for Civil Rights to impose its preferred procedures for handling sexual-assault cases on all the universities in the country that receive federal funds. It did it via a 19-page “Dear Colleague” letter, in the name of Title IX, the provision in federal law prohibiting sexual discrimination in education.
The process was terrible. It blew right by the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires public notice and comment before such rules go into effect. And the substance was worse. If the letter reads as if it was written by inflamed activists who had no interest in balanced proceedings, that’s because it was.
It required colleges to adopt a “preponderance of evidence” standard rather than a “clear and convincing” standard.
It more or less forbade colleges from allowing the cross-examination of accusers.
It adopted a remarkably broad definition of sexual harassment to include “unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature.”
The administration also encouraged the use of a “single investigator-adjudicator system,” i.e., one person as investigator, judge and jury.
The Obama rules are medieval in the sense that they ignore central developments in Anglo-American justice that arose hundreds of years ago.
In their important book “The Campus Rape Frenzy,” KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor Jr. describe how the rules often played out: “Start with an alcohol-soaked set of facts that no state’s criminal law would consider sexual assault. Add an incomplete ‘investigation,’ unfair procedures, and a disciplinary panel uninterested in evidence of innocence. Stir in a de facto presumption of guilt based on misguided Obama administration dictates, ideological zeal, and fear of bad publicity.”
The result has, inevitably, been jaw-dropping miscarriages of justice. Everyone should want perpetrators of sexual assault to be punished — and in the criminal-justice system, not just by colleges — but elementary protections for the accused can’t be discarded in the process.
One reason the Obama rules were so lopsided is that they were crafted in an atmosphere of moral panic. It was assumed that there was a spiraling epidemic of sexual assault on campus. Taylor and Johnson note, to the contrary, that sexual assaults of female college students dropped by more than half between 1997 and 2013, and that young women in college are less likely to be assaulted than those who are not in college.
The Obama rules have been receiving a battering in the courts, where due process is still taken seriously.
A US district court judge wrote in a 2016 ruling against Brandeis University: “If a college student is to be marked for life as a sexual predator, it is reasonable to require that he be provided a fair opportunity to defend himself and an impartial arbiter to make that decision. Put simply, a fair determination of the facts requires a fair process, not tilted to favor a particular outcome, and a fair and neutral fact-finder, not predisposed to reach a particular conclusion.”
This is the animating spirit behind the DeVos changes. They are still being formulated, but a New York Times report suggests that they will correct the worst excesses of the Obama rules and interject fairness into proceedings that were, shamefully, designed to lack it.
Source
Let's thank Betsy Devos: Betsy.Devos@ed.gov and let her know that what she is doing is fantastic and that we fully support it and her. The more of us they hear from the better so let's do it.
Friday, July 14, 2017
Kirsten Gillibrand’s crusade for campus injustice
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is furious that the Trump Department of Education is pulling back from Obama-era demands that colleges junk due process in the name of fighting sexual assault.
She and 30 other congressional Democrats last week wrote Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that they’re “extraordinarily disappointed and alarmed” over actions to diminish “enforcement of federal civil rights law.” Specifically, they complain that DeVos has hired staff hostile to the department’s 2011 guidance on how schools should approach campus sexual assault.
False rape charges again expose injustice of campus kangaroo courts
They’re absolutely right about the hostility: DeVos and her team are ending the jihad by the department’s Office for Civil Rights, which was launched at the behest of extremists like Gillibrand and her colleagues.
Behind the campaign was the claim, based on a single study that’s since been fully discredited, that one US coed in five is a victim of sexual assault. In fact, later — and much more extensive — FBI research shows that women on campus are safer than their off-campus peers.
Which of course doesn’t mean that rape (and lesser offenses) don’t happen on campus, but merely that there’s no unique “rape culture” to be fought.
But the advocates still got their jihad, as Team Obama ordered colleges and universities to institute kangaroo courts to handle sex-assault claims — star chambers where the accused typically has no right to counsel, to examine (and so be able to challenge) evidence and testimony against him or sometimes even to know the specific charges against him.
The Democrats’ letter warns that when a school “mishandles an incident of sexual assault, that this is rarely an isolated incident on that campus” — which is certainly true, if your definition of “mishandling” is giving the accused any rights at all.
The lack of due process has schools across the nation facing lawsuits for expelling students on laughable grounds — including at least one case where even the supposed victim insisted everything was consensual.
Of course, Gillibrand is too committed to admit to any excesses: She’s even still a big fan of Columbia graduate Emma Sulkowicz, aka “Mattress Girl” — whose nationally publicized charges against a fellow student have been utterly debunked by extensive evidence, including her texts with him before and long after the fact.
Sexual assault, on campus or anywhere, is a serious issue. Too bad Gillibrand and her allies are set on exploiting it for their own political gain at the expense of basic justice.
Source
This was written by the Editorial Board of the New York Post not by a fellow MRA on his website which means we are gaining traction as feminism and their followers are losing power,the noose is loosing which means there is hope.
She and 30 other congressional Democrats last week wrote Education Secretary Betsy DeVos that they’re “extraordinarily disappointed and alarmed” over actions to diminish “enforcement of federal civil rights law.” Specifically, they complain that DeVos has hired staff hostile to the department’s 2011 guidance on how schools should approach campus sexual assault.
False rape charges again expose injustice of campus kangaroo courts
They’re absolutely right about the hostility: DeVos and her team are ending the jihad by the department’s Office for Civil Rights, which was launched at the behest of extremists like Gillibrand and her colleagues.
Behind the campaign was the claim, based on a single study that’s since been fully discredited, that one US coed in five is a victim of sexual assault. In fact, later — and much more extensive — FBI research shows that women on campus are safer than their off-campus peers.
Which of course doesn’t mean that rape (and lesser offenses) don’t happen on campus, but merely that there’s no unique “rape culture” to be fought.
But the advocates still got their jihad, as Team Obama ordered colleges and universities to institute kangaroo courts to handle sex-assault claims — star chambers where the accused typically has no right to counsel, to examine (and so be able to challenge) evidence and testimony against him or sometimes even to know the specific charges against him.
The Democrats’ letter warns that when a school “mishandles an incident of sexual assault, that this is rarely an isolated incident on that campus” — which is certainly true, if your definition of “mishandling” is giving the accused any rights at all.
The lack of due process has schools across the nation facing lawsuits for expelling students on laughable grounds — including at least one case where even the supposed victim insisted everything was consensual.
Of course, Gillibrand is too committed to admit to any excesses: She’s even still a big fan of Columbia graduate Emma Sulkowicz, aka “Mattress Girl” — whose nationally publicized charges against a fellow student have been utterly debunked by extensive evidence, including her texts with him before and long after the fact.
Sexual assault, on campus or anywhere, is a serious issue. Too bad Gillibrand and her allies are set on exploiting it for their own political gain at the expense of basic justice.
Source
This was written by the Editorial Board of the New York Post not by a fellow MRA on his website which means we are gaining traction as feminism and their followers are losing power,the noose is loosing which means there is hope.
Friday, February 3, 2017
Support Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education
President Donald Trump’s pick for Education secretary, Betsy DeVos, has cleared the first hurdle in her confirmation process.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee approved DeVos on Tuesday afternoon in a 12-11 vote that fell along party lines.
Creative Commons/User Christopher Penn
Democrats had strongly opposed DeVos’ nomination during her Jan. 17 confirmation hearing. They pressed her on her extended family’s support of organizations that promote conversion therapy and whether she would support gun-free zones in schools. DeVos was mocked in the media for her answers to both questions, even though she denied supporting conversion therapy and her answer on gun-free zones revolved around the notion that a far-off federal bureaucracy might not be the best judge of the unique needs of individual schools.
DeVos was also questioned on campus sexual assault and the Obama administration’s guidance documents that require schools to more forcefully adjudicate accusations with almost no ability for accused students to defend themselves. DeVos wouldn’t commit to upholding Obama-era guidance documents, stating that she would ensure the law is carried out in a way that protects accusers and the rights of the accused.
This, naturally, didn’t sit well with Democrats and activists, who argue that guaranteeing due process for accused students is tantamount to harming accusers.
In opposing DeVos, those against due process rights and school choice (which DeVos strongly supports), created the hashtag “Dump DeVos,” hoping to influence senators. It only worked on Democrats, who were already going to oppose Trump’s nominee.
DeVos’ nomination now moves to the full Senate. Republicans are in the majority, but two GOP members who supported her in committee — Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — have not committed to voting to confirm her on the Senate floor.
Source
We don't usually speak up for women here but this time we will make an exception. This woman has donated and support FIRE which is looking out for falsely accused male students on college and university campuses nationwide. She favors due process rights for the accused male student. That is very fair. I say we support Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education by contacting our Senators and letting them know to support her Secretary of Education. The more of us they hear from the better.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee approved DeVos on Tuesday afternoon in a 12-11 vote that fell along party lines.
Creative Commons/User Christopher Penn
Democrats had strongly opposed DeVos’ nomination during her Jan. 17 confirmation hearing. They pressed her on her extended family’s support of organizations that promote conversion therapy and whether she would support gun-free zones in schools. DeVos was mocked in the media for her answers to both questions, even though she denied supporting conversion therapy and her answer on gun-free zones revolved around the notion that a far-off federal bureaucracy might not be the best judge of the unique needs of individual schools.
DeVos was also questioned on campus sexual assault and the Obama administration’s guidance documents that require schools to more forcefully adjudicate accusations with almost no ability for accused students to defend themselves. DeVos wouldn’t commit to upholding Obama-era guidance documents, stating that she would ensure the law is carried out in a way that protects accusers and the rights of the accused.
This, naturally, didn’t sit well with Democrats and activists, who argue that guaranteeing due process for accused students is tantamount to harming accusers.
In opposing DeVos, those against due process rights and school choice (which DeVos strongly supports), created the hashtag “Dump DeVos,” hoping to influence senators. It only worked on Democrats, who were already going to oppose Trump’s nominee.
DeVos’ nomination now moves to the full Senate. Republicans are in the majority, but two GOP members who supported her in committee — Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — have not committed to voting to confirm her on the Senate floor.
Source
We don't usually speak up for women here but this time we will make an exception. This woman has donated and support FIRE which is looking out for falsely accused male students on college and university campuses nationwide. She favors due process rights for the accused male student. That is very fair. I say we support Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education by contacting our Senators and letting them know to support her Secretary of Education. The more of us they hear from the better.
Tuesday, May 17, 2016
Due process is still being kicked off campus
Academia’s descent into perpetual hysteria and incipient tyranny is partly fueled by the fiction that 1 in 5 college students is sexually assaulted and that campuses require minute federal supervision to cure this. Encouraged by the government’s misuse of discredited social science (one survey supposedly proving this 1-in-5 fiction), colleges and universities are implementing unconstitutional procedures mandated by the government.
The 2006 Duke lacrosse rape case fit the narrative about campuses permeated by a “rape culture.” Except there was no rape. In 2014, the University of Virginia was convulsed by a magazine’s lurid report of a rape that buttressed the narrative that fraternities foment the sexual predation supposedly pandemic in “male supremacist” America. Except there was no rape. Now, Colorado State University at Pueblo has punished the supposed rapist of a woman who says she was not raped.
Grant Neal, a CSU Pueblo pre-med major and athlete, began a relationship with Jane Doe (as identified in Neal’s lawsuit), although she, as a student in the Athletic Training Program, was not supposed to fraternize with athletes. Jane Doe texted an invitation to Neal to come to her apartment. The following is from Neal’s complaint against CSU Pueblo:
“As the intimacy progressed, knowing that they both wanted to engage in sexual intercourse, Jane Doe advised Plaintiff that she was not on birth control. Accordingly, Plaintiff asked if he should put on a condom. Jane Doe clearly and unequivocally responded ‘yes.’ . . . They proceeded to engage in consensual sexual intercourse, during which Jane Doe . . . demonstrated her enjoyment both verbally and non-verbally.”
The next day, one of Jane Doe’s classmates, who neither witnessed nor was told of any assault, noticed a hickey on the woman’s neck. Assuming an assault must have happened, the classmate told school officials that an assault had occurred. Jane Doe told school officials the sex was consensual: “I’m fine and I wasn’t raped.” Neal’s lawsuit says she told an administrator: “Our stories are the same and he’s a good guy. He’s not a rapist, he’s not a criminal, it’s not even worth any of this hoopla!” Neal recorded on his cellphone Jane Doe saying that nothing improper had transpired, and soon the two again had intercourse.
Undeterred, CSU Pueblo mixed hearsay evidence with multiple due process violations, thereby ruining a young man’s present (he has been suspended from the school for as long as Jane Doe is there) and blighting his future (his prospects for admission to another school are bleak).
Title IX of the Education Amendments enacted in 1972 merely says no person at an institution receiving federal funds shall be subjected to discrimination on the basis of sex. From this the government has concocted a right to micromanage schools’ disciplinary procedures, mandating obvious violations of due process.
In 2011, the Education Department’s civil rights office sent “dear colleague” letters to schools directing them to convict accused persons on a mere “preponderance” of evidence rather than “clear and convincing” evidence. Schools were instructed to not allow accused students to cross-examine their accusers, but to allow accusers to appeal not-guilty verdicts, a form of double jeopardy.
Although a “dear colleague” letter is supposedly a mere “guidance document,” it employs the word “must” in effectively mandating policies. While purporting to just “interpret” Title IX, these letters shred constitutional guarantees. And the letters evade the legal requirement that such significant rulemaking must be subject to comment hearings open to a properly notified public. Even were CSU Pueblo inclined to resist such dictates — academic administrators nowadays are frequently supine when challenged — it would risk a costly investigation and the potential loss of the 11 percent of its budget that comes from Washington.
The Chronicle of Higher Education says the case raises this “intriguing” question: “What responsibility does a college have to move ahead with a third-party complaint if the supposed victim says she consented?” This question, which in a calmer time would have a self-evident answer, will be explored in Neal’s lawsuit. It should reveal what the school thought of Jane Doe’s statement exculpating Neal, who says a school official “brushed off” the recording and said that Jane Doe said what she said “just because she was scared of you.” Neal’s lawyer says he suspects that Jane Doe might now be intimating something “inappropriate” and is perhaps scared of losing her place in the Athletic Training Program.
CSU Pueblo should be scared of joining those schools that have lost lawsuits filed by students denied due process. Such suits are remedial education for educators ignorant of constitutional guarantees.
Source
Several distinguished law professors have spoken up protesting "Dear Colleague". "Dear Colleague" has its critics in the Senate. Senator Lamar Alexander and Senator James Lankford are not big fans of "Dear Colleague" so let's let them know. Demand that Catherine Lhamon be brought up on criminal charges.
The 2006 Duke lacrosse rape case fit the narrative about campuses permeated by a “rape culture.” Except there was no rape. In 2014, the University of Virginia was convulsed by a magazine’s lurid report of a rape that buttressed the narrative that fraternities foment the sexual predation supposedly pandemic in “male supremacist” America. Except there was no rape. Now, Colorado State University at Pueblo has punished the supposed rapist of a woman who says she was not raped.
Grant Neal, a CSU Pueblo pre-med major and athlete, began a relationship with Jane Doe (as identified in Neal’s lawsuit), although she, as a student in the Athletic Training Program, was not supposed to fraternize with athletes. Jane Doe texted an invitation to Neal to come to her apartment. The following is from Neal’s complaint against CSU Pueblo:
“As the intimacy progressed, knowing that they both wanted to engage in sexual intercourse, Jane Doe advised Plaintiff that she was not on birth control. Accordingly, Plaintiff asked if he should put on a condom. Jane Doe clearly and unequivocally responded ‘yes.’ . . . They proceeded to engage in consensual sexual intercourse, during which Jane Doe . . . demonstrated her enjoyment both verbally and non-verbally.”
The next day, one of Jane Doe’s classmates, who neither witnessed nor was told of any assault, noticed a hickey on the woman’s neck. Assuming an assault must have happened, the classmate told school officials that an assault had occurred. Jane Doe told school officials the sex was consensual: “I’m fine and I wasn’t raped.” Neal’s lawsuit says she told an administrator: “Our stories are the same and he’s a good guy. He’s not a rapist, he’s not a criminal, it’s not even worth any of this hoopla!” Neal recorded on his cellphone Jane Doe saying that nothing improper had transpired, and soon the two again had intercourse.
Undeterred, CSU Pueblo mixed hearsay evidence with multiple due process violations, thereby ruining a young man’s present (he has been suspended from the school for as long as Jane Doe is there) and blighting his future (his prospects for admission to another school are bleak).
Title IX of the Education Amendments enacted in 1972 merely says no person at an institution receiving federal funds shall be subjected to discrimination on the basis of sex. From this the government has concocted a right to micromanage schools’ disciplinary procedures, mandating obvious violations of due process.
In 2011, the Education Department’s civil rights office sent “dear colleague” letters to schools directing them to convict accused persons on a mere “preponderance” of evidence rather than “clear and convincing” evidence. Schools were instructed to not allow accused students to cross-examine their accusers, but to allow accusers to appeal not-guilty verdicts, a form of double jeopardy.
Although a “dear colleague” letter is supposedly a mere “guidance document,” it employs the word “must” in effectively mandating policies. While purporting to just “interpret” Title IX, these letters shred constitutional guarantees. And the letters evade the legal requirement that such significant rulemaking must be subject to comment hearings open to a properly notified public. Even were CSU Pueblo inclined to resist such dictates — academic administrators nowadays are frequently supine when challenged — it would risk a costly investigation and the potential loss of the 11 percent of its budget that comes from Washington.
The Chronicle of Higher Education says the case raises this “intriguing” question: “What responsibility does a college have to move ahead with a third-party complaint if the supposed victim says she consented?” This question, which in a calmer time would have a self-evident answer, will be explored in Neal’s lawsuit. It should reveal what the school thought of Jane Doe’s statement exculpating Neal, who says a school official “brushed off” the recording and said that Jane Doe said what she said “just because she was scared of you.” Neal’s lawyer says he suspects that Jane Doe might now be intimating something “inappropriate” and is perhaps scared of losing her place in the Athletic Training Program.
CSU Pueblo should be scared of joining those schools that have lost lawsuits filed by students denied due process. Such suits are remedial education for educators ignorant of constitutional guarantees.
Source
Several distinguished law professors have spoken up protesting "Dear Colleague". "Dear Colleague" has its critics in the Senate. Senator Lamar Alexander and Senator James Lankford are not big fans of "Dear Colleague" so let's let them know. Demand that Catherine Lhamon be brought up on criminal charges.
Saturday, October 17, 2015
Glenn Reynolds: The unilateral war on college men
Glenn Reynolds: The unilateral war on college men
Glenn Harlan Reynolds 11:01 a.m. EDT September 30, 2015
An assistant secretary of education thinks she can rewrite rape law by writing a letter.
It appears to many — including me — as if the Obama administration is engaged in a war on college men. Using debunked statistics, the president, the vice president and various other political officials have falsely claimed that there’s an epidemic of rape on college campuses, even though campus rape is, in fact, falling, just as off-campus rape is. (And, in fact, rape is less common on campus than off).
And, ever since the Department of Education issued a ”Dear Colleague" letter to universities in 2011, in essence ordering them to adopt new and draconian campus “sexual assault” rules that treat accusations as presumptively true and force the accused — almost always men — to prove their innocence, sometimes even very strong evidence of innocence is ignored.
Spearheading this effort has been Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon, who has characterized the letter as binding on colleges and universities even though it is not a law, was not adopted as a formal or informal rule making after notice and comment under any law, and appears to have very little to do with the federal anti-discrimination law Title IX, which says only that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
Title IX was supposed to force colleges to admit women to programs formerly reserved for men. The law says nothing about sexual assault, sexual harassment, or the duty of universities to investigate criminal behavior on their own instead of referring crimes to law enforcement. But through a period of interpretation and reinterpretation, that simple statutory language has produced reams of federal paperwork that, in effect, turn a simple academic non-discrimination rule into a rape law that lacks the due process protections and evidentiary standards of actual rape law.
Now it appears that Congress has noticed. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., crashed a Senate hearing last week to grill Deputy Assistant Secretary of Education Amy McIntosh about past statements by Lhamon that purported to establish the “guidance” letter as binding law. How could this be binding, asked Sen. Alexander, when it’s simply a letter issued without any of the procedures required for administrative rule making?
McIntosh didn’t offer much of an answer, and that’s because there isn’t one. As some, including Ari Cohn, have argued for a while, the Department of Education is acting unlawfully here.
A law, to be binding, must pass both houses of Congress and be presented to the president's desk, where it must either pass into law or be vetoed and then overridden by a two-thirds vote of each house. Because this procedure, which the framers of our Constitution designed in order to make lawmaking difficult, turns out to make it difficult to pass laws, we also allow administrative agencies to issue regulations that are binding as law. But those regulations can be issued only after a draft is published and the public has a chance to comment, via either formal or informal rule making.
A mere letter from a bureaucrat, which is all the “Dear Colleague” letter is, has no binding authority. At most, it suggests that the bureaucrats might be willing to go to court to try to convince a judge that their interpretation of the statute is correct.
So why did colleges roll over? Law blogger Scott Greenfield suggests that it’s because the colleges are also warring against college men: “After all, why should a college risk the loss of its lifeblood (federal money) for the sake of protecting a few guys, particularly when the colleges pretty much agree with Lhamon’s progressive ideals?”
Greenfield notes that once Columbia University was sued by a male student claiming that his Title IX rights were violated because of the university’s response to a false accusation, it changed its mind and decided that Title IX didn’t create much in the way of student rights after all. Greenfield concludes: “Regardless of whether one embraces the policy choice embodied in Lhamon’s ‘Dear Colleague’ letters or not, there is no doubt but that it was imposed without lawful authority and adopted by schools who chose to sacrifice one segment of their student population to appease another segment. This is not the law. This is not what Title IX mandates. And they know it, even if you don’t.”
Greenfield is right. It’s nice that members of Congress are taking notice. But male college students and their parents, as well as alumni and trustees — and those women noticing that there’s a shortage of college-educated men all of a sudden — need to ask why there’s a war on college men, and why colleges, seemingly, are on the other side.
Source
Glenn Harlan Reynolds 11:01 a.m. EDT September 30, 2015
An assistant secretary of education thinks she can rewrite rape law by writing a letter.
It appears to many — including me — as if the Obama administration is engaged in a war on college men. Using debunked statistics, the president, the vice president and various other political officials have falsely claimed that there’s an epidemic of rape on college campuses, even though campus rape is, in fact, falling, just as off-campus rape is. (And, in fact, rape is less common on campus than off).
And, ever since the Department of Education issued a ”Dear Colleague" letter to universities in 2011, in essence ordering them to adopt new and draconian campus “sexual assault” rules that treat accusations as presumptively true and force the accused — almost always men — to prove their innocence, sometimes even very strong evidence of innocence is ignored.
Spearheading this effort has been Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon, who has characterized the letter as binding on colleges and universities even though it is not a law, was not adopted as a formal or informal rule making after notice and comment under any law, and appears to have very little to do with the federal anti-discrimination law Title IX, which says only that “no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
Title IX was supposed to force colleges to admit women to programs formerly reserved for men. The law says nothing about sexual assault, sexual harassment, or the duty of universities to investigate criminal behavior on their own instead of referring crimes to law enforcement. But through a period of interpretation and reinterpretation, that simple statutory language has produced reams of federal paperwork that, in effect, turn a simple academic non-discrimination rule into a rape law that lacks the due process protections and evidentiary standards of actual rape law.
Now it appears that Congress has noticed. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., crashed a Senate hearing last week to grill Deputy Assistant Secretary of Education Amy McIntosh about past statements by Lhamon that purported to establish the “guidance” letter as binding law. How could this be binding, asked Sen. Alexander, when it’s simply a letter issued without any of the procedures required for administrative rule making?
McIntosh didn’t offer much of an answer, and that’s because there isn’t one. As some, including Ari Cohn, have argued for a while, the Department of Education is acting unlawfully here.
A law, to be binding, must pass both houses of Congress and be presented to the president's desk, where it must either pass into law or be vetoed and then overridden by a two-thirds vote of each house. Because this procedure, which the framers of our Constitution designed in order to make lawmaking difficult, turns out to make it difficult to pass laws, we also allow administrative agencies to issue regulations that are binding as law. But those regulations can be issued only after a draft is published and the public has a chance to comment, via either formal or informal rule making.
A mere letter from a bureaucrat, which is all the “Dear Colleague” letter is, has no binding authority. At most, it suggests that the bureaucrats might be willing to go to court to try to convince a judge that their interpretation of the statute is correct.
So why did colleges roll over? Law blogger Scott Greenfield suggests that it’s because the colleges are also warring against college men: “After all, why should a college risk the loss of its lifeblood (federal money) for the sake of protecting a few guys, particularly when the colleges pretty much agree with Lhamon’s progressive ideals?”
Greenfield notes that once Columbia University was sued by a male student claiming that his Title IX rights were violated because of the university’s response to a false accusation, it changed its mind and decided that Title IX didn’t create much in the way of student rights after all. Greenfield concludes: “Regardless of whether one embraces the policy choice embodied in Lhamon’s ‘Dear Colleague’ letters or not, there is no doubt but that it was imposed without lawful authority and adopted by schools who chose to sacrifice one segment of their student population to appease another segment. This is not the law. This is not what Title IX mandates. And they know it, even if you don’t.”
Greenfield is right. It’s nice that members of Congress are taking notice. But male college students and their parents, as well as alumni and trustees — and those women noticing that there’s a shortage of college-educated men all of a sudden — need to ask why there’s a war on college men, and why colleges, seemingly, are on the other side.
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Sunday, May 27, 2012
Men's centers in acadamia
I'm reading where a lot of college men are starting men's centers on university and college campuses and they are getting a lot of flack from feminists and manginas. If you are anti-feminist,pro-MRA and you are one of these guys we have your back. If you fit the criteria I previously mentioned then we will back you and help you get the center set up and fight off the feminasties. Universities and colleges should be the place for free speech and the fair exchange of ideas. Under feminism it is anything but that. It is time to restore what once was and return freedom to university and college campuses. You young college men are the future and when we get these centers set up and running things should get better for college men everywhere. A men's center will give men a male positive perspective by letting them know that masculinity is not evil just as femininity is not virtuous . The day and age of men accepting female abuse is over and we are not going to take it anymore and we're going to let other men know they don't have to take it either. Let's get those centers up and running.
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