The U.S. Department of Education is pressing schools to reduce their due process protections for people accused of sexual harassment or misconduct, and to eliminate people’s opportunity to cross-examine their accusers, under the premise that schools have been too slow to credit accusations. This will make an already bad situation on campus even worse. As Harvey Silverglate, the former head of the Massachusetts ACLU, points out at Minding The Campus, many schools already find students and teachers guilty even when they are clearly innocent.
As attorney Silverglate notes, many universities, such as Stanford, the University of Virginia, Brandeis and Washington University, have reduced safeguards against false accusations under pressure from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. But “even before the lowering of the evidentiary burden, a number of students around the country were found guilty in campus tribunals on sexual assault charges, only to be later vindicated. At George Washington University, a student found guilty of sexual assault—despite the eyewitness testimony of his three roommates that the encounter was consensual—is now suing the school for $6 million in damages. The University of North Dakota found a student guilty of sexual assault, but refused to reopen the case even after state authorities charged his accuser with filing a false police report. And at Brown University, a student withdrew in 2006 after being accused of rape and now is suing the university, his accuser and her father, a wealthy donor who allegedly influenced Brown officials throughout the process.”
